TEEN USE OF POT, BOOZE, CIGARETTES DOWN SLIGHTLY

Teenagers' use of marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes dropped slightly across
all age groups and most adolescents reported a greater awareness of the
risks associated with those activities, according to an annual federal
survey of high school students released yesterday.

Through most of the 1990s, the survey, known as the Monitoring the Future
Study, showed steady increases in cigarette smoking, alcohol and drug abuse
among teenagers. Last year, the survey showed those trends leveling off,
and this year for the first time there are indications they might be
reversing direction.

``We are still at this tilt point where things are moving in the right
direction but not necessarily by great magnitude,'' said Lloyd D. Johnston,
who heads the survey team at the University of Michigan Institute for
Social Research.

The survey results were greeted by administration officials as a modest
cause for hope. ``Not a lot,'' said Secretary of Health and Human Services
Donna E. Shalala. ``And not nearly as much as we want. But enough to say
we're making a little bit of a dent in a very big problem.''

For the survey, a representative sample of nearly 50,000 students completed
a questionnaire.

For the first time in the 1990s, the survey recorded declines in cigarette
smoking by respondents at all three grade levels. Johnston said he believed
that publicity about lawsuits against tobacco companies and the
administration's efforts to enact national tobacco legislation cast greater
attention on the adverse consequences of cigarette smoking and helped
change attitudes among young people.

The survey results on marijuana were especially important, Shalala said,
because it is the most widely used drug among teenagers and because it
accounted for most of the increase in overall illicit drug use by
adolescents in the 1990s. This year's survey found slight decreases in
marijuana use in all three of the grades surveyed, with eighth-graders
reporting a decline for the second year in a row.

Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the White House national drug policy
office, declared that ``the 1998 study shows that we have turned the tide
of youth drug use.''

Most of the declines in overall illicit drug use were of less than 1
percentage point, barely enough to be statistically significant. The survey
also showed that nearly a quarter of eighth-graders and about half of all
high school seniors said they had tried marijuana, and those figures are
still much higher than just a few years ago.

Taking a more cautious approach than McCaffrey, Shalala said, ``The bottom
line is that we have not achieved victory -- and I am not declaring it.''

The mixed picture was evident with the students who reported regular recent
marijuana use. Among eighth-graders, 9.7 percent said they had used
marijuana in the month preceding the 1998 survey -- a drop from 10.2
percent last year, but well above the 3.2 percent of 1992.

As marijuana use increased in the mid-1990s, the number of adolescents
reporting that they perceived risks in the drug decreased. Over the past
two years, this perception seems to have changed toward a greater
appreciation of the risks, most clearly among the youngest teens.

Checked-by: Richard Lake