DRUG SURVEY OF CHILDREN FINDS MIDDLE SCHOOL A PIVOTAL TIME

The first national drug-abuse survey to include elementary-school
children among the respondents suggests that youngsters become more
vulnerable to the lure of drugs once they leave the familiar
environment of primary school and strive to fit into middle school.

The new survey, by Pride, an organization based in Atlanta that
counsels schools and parents on ways to inhibit drug use among the
young, also confirms again what many researchers have long known: that
cigarettes, alcohol (primarily beer) and inhalants are used far more
by children than are marijuana or harder drugs.

Pride -- the name is an acronym for the National Parents' Resource
Institute for Drug Education -- issued its findings yesterday at its
national conference in Cincinnati. Until now, drug-abuse surveys among
children did not focus on those below the eighth grade. But Pride's
survey questioned pupils from Grade 4 through Grade 6, and among the
findings were these:

The proportion of respondents who said they had smoked cigarettes in
the last month jumped to 7 percent of sixth graders from 1.6 percent
of fourth graders. Similarly 2.1 percent of fourth graders said they
drank beer at least once a month, fewer than half the 4.7 percent of
sixth graders who reported doing so. Monthly sniffing of glue and
other inhalants also rose between the grades, although less so: to 2.7
percent of sixth graders from 2.2 percent of fourth graders.

As for marijuana, only 0.4 percent of fourth-grade pupils acknowledged
having smoked it in the last month, as against 1.7 percent of sixth
graders.

In discussing their findings, officials of Pride also cited previous
research, for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, indicating that
children's risk of engaging in drug use rises when they move from
elementary school to middle -- which, depending on the district,
begins in Grade 5, 6 or 7 -- and later from middle school to high
school. Peer pressure and association with new friends appear to be
leading causes.

Although marijuana use among the survey's respondents was far less
common than their beer drinking or cigarette smoking, the director of
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy noted a sharp
jump in monthly marijuana smoking from fifth graders (0.6 percent) to
sixth (1.7 percent).

"The reported dramatic increase of marijuana use between the fifth and
sixth grades," said the director, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, retired,
"is a real wake-up call to parents. We have got to get the word out
that the pre-teen years are the key transition period where parents
can play a critical role."

The findings were based on responses from 26,086 pupils at public and
private schools in 22 states during the 1997-98 school year. Pride
sent a questionnaire to the participating schools with instructions
for administering it, and all answers were anonymous.

Doug Hall, a Pride spokesman, said the researchers had used a
test-retest method in which the pupils were asked the same questions
twice within a two-week period to catch any statistical
inconsistencies. But the schools had all volunteered to participate in
the survey, making them somewhat less representative than a broader
nationwide sample would have been.

The researchers found that the children interviewed, who ranged in age
from 9 to 12, seemed to overestimate the number of friends and
classmates who smoked cigarettes, drank beer or experimented with
marijuana. For example, 14 percent of sixth graders said they believed
that their friends had smoked marijuana, but fewer than 4 percent
admitted having tried it themselves at some point.

"This misperception alone -- that everybody's doing it -- can be a
powerful motivator behind much of the drug use we see," said Thomas J.
Gleaton, the president of Pride. "Youth need an accurate portrayal of
drug use that begins with correcting the misperception that everyone
is doing it."

The nation's foremost annual survey of drug use by the young,
Monitoring the Future, at the University of Michigan, questions eighth
graders and up. It asks when they first began using drugs, and their
answers indicate the same leap in experimentation between elementary
school and middle school.

In 1997, the latest year measured, just 0.9 percent of eighth graders
said they had first tried marijuana in the fourth grade, 4.2 percent
in the sixth grade.

Similarly 8.3 percent said they had begun drinking alcohol in the
fourth grade, and 12 percent in the sixth grade. And 7.8 percent said
they had started smoking cigarettes in the fourth grade, and 12.4
percent in the sixth grade.

In December, the Michigan survey reported that in 1997 marijuana use,
after rising for six years, began to decline slightly among 10th and
12th graders and failed to increase among 8th graders. This raised
hopes that prevention messages were finally paying off.