CHILDREN SURROUNDED BY DRUGS, STUDY FINDS

Parents and educators in denial, official says

WASHINGTON -- Increasing drug use among middle- and high-school students will
continue unless parents, principals and teachers recognize the
pervasiveness of drugs and become more involved with students, a
leading anti-drug advocate said Tuesday.

"When we send our children to middle and high school, we are tossing
them into turbulent seas of illegal drugs, alcohol and nicotine," said
Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman of The National Center on Addiction
and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York. "Basically, a
drug-free school is an oxymoron in America."

Califano released a national survey in which 430 of the 1,000 middle-
and high-school students polled said that a 13-year-old can buy LSD,
cocaine or heroin at school. Twenty-six percent said the drugs could
be purchased within one day.

The survey, conducted by The Luntz Research Cos. of Arlington, Va.,
between May and July, also revealed differing perceptions among
students, administrators and teachers. While 78 percent of high school
students reported drug use at their schools, 82 percent of their
principals and 56 percent of their teachers said their schools are
drug free.

The survey polled 822 principals but did not specify how many of them
were affiliated with high schools or middle schools. In addition,
Luntz Research contacted 478 high-school and 345 middle-school teachers.

"Starkly put, in 1990s America we have created for children at the
moment of their entry into their first teen year ... a world where
drugs, alcohol and cigarettes are widely available at school and from
classmates," said Califano, who served as secretary of Health,
Education and Welfare during the Carter administration. "It is a world
where parents, teachers and principals are in such a state of denial
about the risk of substance abuse these children face that they are
not providing the support these children need."

The study, funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found that
children whose parents spend time with them after school, at meals and
in places of worship report the lowest incidents of drug use. Califano
cited the finding in urging parents to "be less self-indulgent, more
attentive to our children and more willing to talk to them" about drug
abuse.

The study, "Back to School 1998," is the fourth-annual survey the
center has commissioned from Luntz Research. In each of the four
years, a plurality of students between ages 12 and 17 reported drugs
as the greatest problem they face, surpassing other social pressures.
For the third straight year, the percentage of students reporting that
drugs are used, sold and kept at school has risen, to 78 percent this
year from 72 percent in 1996.

"America's children have been crying out for help, and not enough
people are listening," said Califano, who also served as Johnson's
chief assistant for domestic affairs. "Parents, teachers and
principals should not fear failure. What they should fear above all is
the judgment of God and history if we, the most affluent people on
earth, do not make the time and commitment to give our children the
moral and social strength to cope with the world of illegal drugs,
cigarettes and alcohol into which we thrust them as they enter their
first teen year."

The National Education Association, a teachers' organization, and the
National Association of Secondary School Principals vehemently
objected to the depiction of teachers and principals as being unaware
of drug use in their schools. However, the groups hailed the survey

for keeping the focus on the scourge of teen-age drug use and said
parents and civic leaders, in addition to teachers and principals,
must be vigilant in the fight against drugs.

"It's only going to be solved by bringing all the people who influence
kids together," said Jerald Newberry, executive director of the
education association's health information network.

Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady