STUDY: DRUGS' LURE BECKONS WITH START OF MIDDLE SCHOOL

Children Are Affected By Association With New Pals, Peer Pressure

The first national drug-abuse survey to include elementary-school
children among the respondents suggests that youngsters become more
vulnerable to 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 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 Wednesday 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 grades four through six, and among the
findings were these:

The proportion of respondents who said they had smoked cigarettes in
the past 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 by grade level, 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 past month, as against 1.7 percent of
sixth-graders.

In discussing their findings, officials of Pride also cited previous
research, done 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 school -- which, depending on the
district, begins in grade five, six or seven -- and later from middle
school to high school. Peer pressure and association with new friends
appear to be the leading causes.

Although marijuana use among the survey's respondents was far less
common than 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, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey,
"is a real wake-up call to parents. We have got to get the word out
that the preteen 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.

The nation's foremost annual survey of youthful drug use, 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, and 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.