DRUG RELATED EMERGENCIES DROP

WASHINGTON -- The number of drug-related visits to hospital emergency rooms
across the country has fallen for the first time in the 1990s, federal
health officials announced Tuesday.

After rising steadily through 1994, drug-caused emergency treatment
declined 6 percent from 1995 to 1996, according to the federal government's
Drug Abuse Warning Network, a national reporting system. The data came from
responses from 21 metropolitan communities.

The decrease, though, is largely attributable to fewer cases involving
legal drugs. For instance, there were significant drops in cases involving
the pain relievers aspirin and ibuprofen.

Also falling were the number of cases involving methamphetamine, or speed,
and PCP, a powerful psychedelic drug.

``The slight success we are seeing encourages us to continue our hard
work,'' Barry McCaffrey, White House national drug-policy director, said in
a statement.

Overall, there were 487,600 drug-related emergency room visits in 1996,
down from 517,800 in 1995, according to the survey, which polls a sampling
of U.S. hospitals. Half the cases were drug overdoses, and an additional 37
percent were attempted suicides, the report said.

The most common cases were alcohol used with another drug; there were
nearly 160,000 of these cases last year, down slightly from 168,000 in
1995.

Cocaine and heroin were the next-most-common cases, at 144,180 and 70,463,
respectively, both essentially unchanged from 1995. Because one visit to
the emergency room often involves more than one drug, the individual
statistics add up to more than the total number of visits.

Officials said a leveling off of illegal drug cases is significant given
the steep increases in illegal drug use and emergency-room visits between
1990 and 1994.

``We've watched the upward side of the slope begin to turn down,'' said Bob
Weiner, a McCaffrey press officer.

Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala noted the growing number
of marijuana cases: 50,000 in 1996. The growth ``provides a loud and clear
message that marijuana is a powerful drug with potentially serious
consequences,'' she said in a statement.

``Drug abuse has real and severe consequences: for the abusers themselves,
for their families, for the health care system and for taxpayers,'' she
said.

McCaffrey said the decreases in drug-related emergency treatment, ``though
slight,'' give credence to other recent surveys that indicate ``the upward
slope of drug abuse has indeed begun to be arrested. The numbers are an
incentive to turn these slight decreases into substantial long-term
reductions.''

Earlier this month, President Clinton released the ``Monitoring the
Future'' survey by the University of Michigan, showing an increased number
of eighth-graders disapproving of drug use. But that annual survey also
found that more 10th- and 12th-graders had tried marijuana at least once,
and that cocaine use by high school seniors had increased.

Another national survey released this summer showed the use of illegal
drugs by teenagers down slightly, but still much higher than it was in
1992.