UCT PROBE SHOWS ABUSE SOARS AMONG SCHOOL-KIDS

Cape Town - Cape Town teenagers are becoming serious drug abusers, with
Grade 11 pupils in the city spending about R22-million a year on dagga,
Mandrax, cigarettes and alcohol.

This is revealed by a drug survey among grade 8 and 11 (standard 6 and 9)
pupils by the department of psychiatry at the University of Cape Town, the
National Urbanisation and Health Research Programme and the bio-statistics
division of the SA Medical Research Council.

The survey was conducted at 39 representative state schools around the
Peninsula.

Only pupils in grades 8 and 11 were asked to fill in the questionnaires,
during a normal school period while teachers were absent. The study found
that Grade 11 students: Spent an average of R10 a week on cigarettes and
R20 a week on liquor.

* Spent most on Mandrax, with girls who used it spending an average of R52
per week and boys R30.

* Spent R14-million a year on alcohol.

And dagga use had almost doubled for girls and boys in the past seven y
ears. In both grades 8 and 11 it was found that use rates were consistently
higher for boys for all drugs except Mandrax.

Ingrid von Stern of the Cape Town Drug Counseling Centre in Observatory
said there had been "a huge increase" in the number of teenagers seeking
treatment for substance abuse.

"Two of every three people who come to us are teenagers and a large
proportion of them are under 16," she said.

Their youngest client was 12 years old.

Ms Von Stern said teenagers would steal money from parents, friends and
family and would even prostitute themselves to get money for drugs.

The use of drugs among teenagers also went hand in hand with the rave
scene, which was growing in popularity.

"There are substantial economic implications of substance use by high
school students," says the report. "One is that the direct or indirect
provision of alcohol and drugs to school-going youth is clearly big
business that needs to be tackled head-on."

It warns that "a large number of students are at risk for the adverse
consequences of substance use. Further analysis of the data will be done to
show that such consequences are likely to include increased risk of
unprotected sex, violence and transport injuries."

The MRC/UCT study showed that although alcohol and cigarettes were the
substances most abused by both grades, there was a growing use of harder
drugs.

Ms Von Stern said most of the centre's clients needed treatment for
cannabis-Mandrax addiction, but there had also been a big increase in
teenagers seeking help for heroin abuse.

The MRC/UCT data suggests that by the time most boys reach grade 11, almost
6% will have tried Mandrax at least once.

The survey also revealed that: n About 40% of Grade 8 boys (about 14 years
old) had smoked cigarettes, 41% had used alcohol, 8% had smoked cannabis
and 7% had sniffed glue.

* A total of 58% of Grade 11 boys (aged about 17) had smoked cigarettes,
66% had used alcohol, 32% had smoked cannabis and 16% had sniffed glue.

The data was collected during the second and third terms of 1997. The
findings were compared with those of a previous UCT and MRC study in 1990.

The researchers are now working on further studies in connection with
substance abuse.

These include, the nature and extent of violence and its relationship to
drugs, whether there is a "gateway" effect causing adolescents to progress
from the use of one substance to another, demographic factors such as age,
gender and race and academic achievement.

A preliminary analysis of the data had shown that last month teenage users
of cigarettes, alcohol and cannabis were more likely to have repeated a
year in school than those who had not used the substances.