FRIENDS DRINK, BUT TEEN VOWS NEVER TO

Mr. Wallace: I hang around with a couple of guys who drink. I don't drink!
My parents are trying to get me to stop being close friends with these guys.
They think my friends will eventually get me to start drinking, but I can
assure you this will never happen. I'm 16 and old enough to make up my own
mind. Why do parents think their kids are going to do everything their
friends do? If my friends decided to rob a bank or commit suicide, you can
be sure I wouldn't join them. - Carl, Brookhaven, Miss.

Carl: "On the average, a user convinces three others to try drugs, including
alcohol." So says Richard Schwartz of the Georgetown University School of
Medicine, succinctly describing the power of peer pressure. You may feel
immune to this power, but it operates in subtle as well as direct and
obvious ways. At a moment when your resistance is low, "joining in the fun"
with your friends may suddenly appear tempting, and have tragic consequences
(if it leads to drink- and driving).

You can hypothesize any number of outlandish activities you'd never get
talked into doing - like robbing a bank - and conclude that peer pressure
has no pull on you, but the logic doesn't hold. Drinking is a pastime your
friends are actually engaged in. I don't blame your parents for being
concerned.

Mr. Wallace: You stated that marijuana is a gateway drug that can lead to
the abuse of hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin. This is simply not true.
My girlfriend and I have been smoking pot for almost two years and we have
never tried any other kind of drug, including alcohol. Please print facts,
not myths. - Don, Frederick, Okla.

Don: It's fact, not myth, that marijuana is a gateway drug that can lead to
the abuse of harder substances. In a University of Virginia survey of more
than 5,000 drug addicts, over 90 percent said they started their drug use
with marijuana. The fact is, according to the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in America
and tends to be the first illegal drug teens use. In a survey of high school
seniors, 30.7 percent said they had used marijuana at least once in the past
year.

The good news, according to the American Council for Drug Education, is that
the majority of teens (72 percent) who smoke marijuana do not go on to other
illegal drugs.

Write to Robert Wallace in care of the Telegram-Tribune, P.O. Box 112, San
Luis Obispo, CA 93406-0112.