TEEN DRUG USE SURVEY SEEN AS 'WARNING SIGN'

Fewer Teens Believe Use of LSD, Pot and Ecstasy Is Risky. Extreme
Binge Drinking Is an Additional Worry.

The federal government's annual report of kids' alcohol and drug
abuse seems reassuring: Compared with earlier in the decade, use of
hallucinogens was down in 2008, marijuana use was way down, and use
of methamphetamines was way, way down.

But the researchers and public officials who crunch those numbers
warned that some of the statistics gleaned from an annual survey of
46,000 American eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders were worrisome.

Though drug and alcohol use seems to be declining or holding steady,
there has been slippage in teen disapproval of such practices and
perception of the risks, officials warned.

Take marijuana use, which had declined steadily among teens since the
mid-1990s. This year, 19.4% of high school seniors said they had
smoked marijuana at some point in the prior 30 days, as did 13.8% of
10th-graders and 5.8% of eighth-graders. The downward trend has
stalled in the last two years, and kids' attitudes suggest a reversal
may be ahead.

In 1991, 58% of eighth-graders said they thought occasional marijuana
use was harmful. By last year, that number had fallen to 48%, and
this year, to 45%.

In a Washington, D.C., news conference Monday, Gil Kerlikowske, the
Obama administration's drug czar, called such numbers "a warning sign."

"When beliefs soften, drug use worsens," said Kerlikowske, whose
office is expected to release its first policy initiatives to combat
and treat drug abuse in February.

University of Michigan researcher Lloyd Johnston, who oversees the
annual survey, said there was "serious softening" in the perceived
risks of LSD, inhalants and the party drug Ecstasy -- a sign that "a
new generation of kids are interested . . . in rediscovering these
drugs, because they don't understand why they shouldn't be using them."

Johnston also flagged a phenomenon the survey has recently begun to
track -- "extreme binge drinking," or the consumption of more than 10
drinks on a single occasion. Coming on the heels of the weekend death
of South Pasadena's Aydin Salek, an 18-year-old suspected of having
succumbed to alcohol poisoning, the survey's findings suggest that
such high-risk drinking is not unusual among older teens.

Binge drinking, defined as consumption of five drinks or more in a
row, has declined since peaking in 1983. But Johnston said there has
been "not much decline" in numbers of extreme binge drinkers.

Among high school seniors, 11% said they had drunk 10 drinks or more
in a row in the two weeks prior to the survey; 6% said they'd had 15 or more.

The survey also showed that U.S. adolescents continue to raid their
parents' and friends' medicine chests. Use of prescription
painkillers is at an all-time high: 10% of high-school seniors
reported taking Vicodin for nonmedical reasons in the last year, and
5% reported taking OxyContin.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
which has commissioned the survey for 35 years, said at the news
conference that teen use of prescription stimulant drugs is holding
steady, with just over 7% of 10th- and 12th-graders reporting they
had taken amphetamines -- drugs prescribed to many kids in treatment
of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder -- for nonmedical
reasons. Volkow said that in many cases, teens take these drugs
before tests or study sessions as "cognitive enhancers."

Although fewer kids reported taking Ritalin, much of that decline was
because kids had merely shifted to Adderall, a newer ADHD drug.

The officials said that youths report some confidence that
prescription drugs are less harmful than street drugs.

In the survey's first accounting of where kids get drugs, it found
that 66% who reported illicit drug use said they got the drugs from a
friend or relative. Almost 19% said they got drugs with a doctor's
prescription.