WASHINGTON (AP) Drug abuse among American youths continues to increase,
even though overall drug use in the country is declining, and it's starting
at a younger age, the administration's drug czar said.

``Our children are using drugs again and in increasing numbers,'' retired
Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey told reporters on Tuesday. ``And we're seeing new
and disturbing phenomenon with heroin exposure, marijuana and other emerging
drugs.''

Citing findings from a semiannual check of drug use trends in the United
States, McCaffrey said there were increased hospital admissions for children
abusing marijuana, often in combination with alcohol, methamphetamines or
crack cocaine.

``In addition, we're clearly seeing the migration of heroin smoked,
snorted, or injected into student populations and bluecollar Caucasian
workers,'' he added. ``The drug threat is changing and student populations
are picking up on it, and it's tending to drift into younger years.''

The administration's point man on the war against drugs said the average age
at which kids report first using illegal drugs is 16, but ``significant
numbers'' of eighthgraders had reported trying marijuana.

McCaffrey attributed the rise to a change in values toward drugs since 1990
among children 17 and younger, with resulting increases in drug abuse. ``It's
doubled among kids in general; it's almost tripled among eighthgraders,'' he
said.

The report on national trends in illegal drug abuse and drug markets in the
second half of 1996, conducted by McCaffrey's Office of National Drug Control
Policy, was based on interviews with epidemiologists, drug abuse treatment
providers and police in cities across the country. While it did not measure
the amount of increase, McCaffrey said the report gave ``qualitative
assessments'' of drug use, compared to the year previous.

The analysis showed that cocaine and crack cocaine abuse had stabilized or
declined, although there were still an estimated 1.4 million chronic addicts
in America.

McCaffrey noted it was possible that methamphetamine, ``the poor man's
cocaine,'' was replacing crack in some areas. Abuse of the highly addictive
methamphetamine, he added, was ``the absolute dominant drug problem'' in
southern California and parts of San Francisco, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana and
Missouri, and there were signs of its spread elsewhere.