Teens and Marijuana: Scaring Them Straight Has Lost Its Edge

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

The quarrel gets played out daily in thousands of families.
Stay away from marijuana, the exasperated parent warns; it
will mess up your future. The teenager retorts: But you
tried it and it didn't hurt you.

At home or school, when the conversation turns to illegal
drugs the subject is usually marijuana. As many as 70
million Americans, including many of today's parents, have
smoked it. And as their children can be quick to point out,
the vast majority did not go on to be addicted to cocaine or
heroin.

So how do parents persuade a skeptical 14yearold not to
try marijuana, when the teenager can see across the dinner
table that their lives weren't ruined?

The Clinton administration will face that challenge next
month as it starts a $175million advertising campaign aimed
at discouraging teens from using marijuana and other drugs.

If teens scoff at the idea that marijuana is a gateway to
the use of hard drugs, they may tune out other warnings of
drugs' effects on their health and their critical school
years. But even as advocates of legalizing marijuana are
agreeing with prohibitionists that the drug shouldn't be
used by teens, the gateway theory is under new attack.

The prevalence of marijuana was documented again last week
by a national survey reporting that teenagers were more
likely to see drugs sold at their schools than in their
neighborhoods and that nearly one in four said they could
find someone to sell them marijuana in less than an hour.

And according to a government survey of households released
in August, the proportion of adolescents from age 12 to 17
who consider marijuana risky dropped to 54 percent last
year, from 63 percent in 1994.

In a new book, "Marijuana Myths; Marijuana Facts," Dr. John
P. Morgan and Lynn Zimmer highlight what they consider
fallacies of the gateway theory. Citing government
statistics, they report that for every 100 people who use
marijuana, 28 go on to try cocaine, 12 use cocaine a dozen
times or more, but only one keeps using it weekly.

"People using uncommon drugs have almost always used common
drugs first," said Professor Zimmer, a sociologist at Queens
College in New York City. Calling marijuana a gateway, she
said, was like saying that people who ride motorcycles begin
by pedaling a bicycle. "If you wanted to stop motorcycle
riding," she said, "you wouldn't start by stopping people
from riding bikes."

Indeed, marijuana is not the only stepping stone. Most
youngsters who try marijuana smoke tobacco first; many also
drink beer.

"The gateway drug of all the others is still alcohol," said
Dr. Nicholas A. Pace, a Manhattan doctor who treats
adolescents for substance abuse. But he added, "Without
exception, all those people who are into heroin started with
marijuana."

In New York, it is almost impossible to find addicts who
didn't start with marijuana. "You're always looking for a
stronger drug," said Nick, a Bronx 19yearold who said he
graduated to cocaine from "blunts" marijuana stuffed into
hollowedout cigars. "You try to get that first high again."

After examining the cases of 835 drug abusers in New York,
two sociologists, Andrew Golub and Bruce D. Johnson,
reported in 1995 that "use of marijuana as a teen is an
important indicator of increased risk for subsequent serious
drug abuse." But discouraging marijuana use, they cautioned,
"will not necessarily reduce the subsequent prevalence of
serious drug abuse."

Dr. Robert L. DuPont, a psychiatrist who formerly headed the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, said the gateway concept
describes how drug use progresses rather than why it
happens. In his book, "The Selfish Brain: Learning from
Addiction," DuPont says that while no one is immune from
addiction, discernible genetic and psychological factors
mark some people as more vulnerable. These include having a
parent or sibling addicted to alcohol or drugs, impulsive
behavior, preoccupation with feelings of pleasure, a lack of
religious or spiritual values and being between 12 and 30
years old.

Since marijuana is the illegal drug most popular with teen
agers, who are still in school, it makes sense to consider
its effect on shortterm memory and motivation. A study of
undergraduates at the University of Maryland found that
those with the lowest grade averages were four times more
likely to smoke pot than those with the highest.. No such
gap was observed between good and poor students who drank
alcohol.

Experts like Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal, an addiction
psychiatrist, support parents who warn their children that
marijuana can harm their motivation and learning ability.
Also, he said, "You don't learn to master the normal anxiety
of adolescence. Adolescence is an anxious and painful time.
One the things you'll learn is how to handle that
awkwardness and social discomfort. You're masking that with
marijuana or alcohol."

Even outspoken advocates of legal marijuana flinch at
sharing it with adolescents just as most smokers and
drinkers do. Dennis Peron, the originator of the California
ballot initiative supporting medicinal marijuana, defends
all marijuana use as medical, then adds, "but not for kids."

And while Morgan defends marijuana as "amazingly benign in
its human use," he acknowledges that it isn't entirely safe.
That is why he says, "Psychoactive drug use is an activity
for adults and not children."

Since the public generally opposes the legalization of
marijuana for anyone, such qualms over the proper age for
experimenting may be expressed more with an eye to the law
or to public opinion. Yet the risk to youth is the only area
in which both proponents and opponents of pot find
themselves in accord. "Whether we're talking about alcohol
and tobacco or marijuana and cocaine," DuPont said,
"everybody agrees that kids shouldn't use."