TEEN DRUG USE CONTINUED TO INCREASE IN '97

Social Issues:The upward trend among youth is seen in all ethnic groups and
across the nation.

Washington-nearly 10 percent of teen-agers smoked marijuana at least once a
month last year,according to the latest federal survey of household drug
use released Friday.

While drug use among the overall population remained basically the same as
in 1996, the survey found that 2.5 million Americans started smoking pot
that year, most of them in the 12 to 17-year-old age bracket.

Marijuana use in that age group rose from 7.1 percent to 9.4 percent last
year, continuing a trend that started in 1992. Overall use of illicit drugs
among teens rose from 9 percent in 1996 to 11.4 percent in 1997.

The survey, which involves an annual canvass of 25,000 households each
year, indicates that marijuana is the most frequently used illicit drug,
with about 60 percent of users reporting they used only pot, and an
additional 20 percent saying they used it along with other drugs.

"We've got children who smoke marijuana almost every day," said Barry
McCaffrey, director of the White House Office on Drug Control Policy. "If
you go back to '92 and forward to '97, it went up 275 percent."

Pot use increased among all 12 to 17-year-olds, regardless of race, sex or
region of the country. "None of us should think that this problem can be
marginalized as being related to some community other than our own. It
affects all of us," McCaffrey said.

And the survey found that the percentage of teens who felt smoking
marijuana once or twice a week was risky declined from 57 percent to 54
percent in a year. "As the perception of risk goes down, the rate of use
goes up," said Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. "Young
people choose marijuana because they don't believe it is dangerous."

But, she said, "Marijuana is not safe. Our research increasingly proves
that marijuana is dangerous, it impairs learning and it impairs memory."

The surveys also show that overall drug use and marijuana use are still
only a bit more than half the peak levels of illicit drug use reported in
1979, when there were 25 million illegal drug users, vs. an estimated 13.9
million last year.