POT SMOKING MAKES COMEBACK AMONG TEENAGERS

Obama's Drug Czar Blames Prop. 19 and Similar State Measures for Reported Rise.

After nearly a decade in decline, marijuana is making a strong
comeback among teens, with more high school seniors reporting that
they had recently smoked pot than cigarettes, according to a
government survey issued Tuesday.

This year, 21.4% of high school seniors said they had used marijuana
in the last 30 days, while 19.2% reported smoking cigarettes in the
same time period, according to the annual "Monitoring the Future"
survey from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It was the first
time since 1981 that pot surpassed tobacco in that age group.

The remarkable crossover is a victory for public health campaigns
aimed at stamping out cigarette smoking among teens. But the federal
office that tracks illicit drug use said it was driven by an uptick
in youth marijuana use that is broad-based and likely to continue,
with even eighth-graders reporting softer attitudes about the risk of
smoking pot.

The Obama administration's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, blamed state
medical marijuana measures like California's Proposition 19 for
making pot seem less dangerous to younger Americans.

"Calling marijuana 'smoked medicine' is absolutely incorrect,"
Kerlikowske said at a news conference in Washington to present the
findings. Young people, he said, have taken the "wrong message" from
the debate.

In the survey, the proportion of 12th-graders who acknowledged daily
use of marijuana reached 6.1% -- the highest point since the early
1980s -- and the numbers of eighth- and 10th-graders smoking pot
daily also climbed, to 1% and 3%, respectively. As these younger
students advance toward graduation, rates of pot-smoking will
continue to climb, researchers said.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
called the rise in daily marijuana use particularly troubling given
that frequent use has been shown to be more damaging to learning and
memory than occasional use -- especially in teenagers, whose brains
are still developing. Daily smokers are also at far higher risk of
developing dependency on marijuana and other drugs, she said.

Attitudes toward the club drug Ecstasy also softened among eighth-
and 10th-graders, and use increased. Researchers called the increase
an example of "generational forgetting," in which a lull in use is
followed by an uptick among younger people who were not exposed to
anti-drug messages.

Among high school seniors, 8% said they had abused the prescription
pain medication Vicodin in the previous year, down from 9.7% in 2009.
Illicit use of the opioid painkiller OxyContin held steady in that
group and was up among 10th-graders. Twelfth-graders continued to
report the nonmedical use of drugs prescribed for attention deficit
disorder -- about 6.5% acknowledged taking them in the last year, and
roughly the same number used amphetamines.

Pot, however, outpaced all of those, with roughly 1 in 3 seniors --
and 1 in 4 10th-graders -- reporting that they had smoked marijuana
in the last year.