FLORIDA TEEN DRUG USE DECLINES

Alcohol Attitudes Cause Concern

Alcohol, tobacco and illegal-drug use among Florida teenagers
continues to decline, despite some alarming trends among girls and
ominous attitudes toward booze, Gov. Jeb Bush and his top drug
adviser said Thursday.

Jim McDonough, head of the governor's Office of Drug Control, said
trend lines since the state took its first teen drug survey in 2000
were headed downward. Bush, who set a goal of cutting youth drug
abuse by half during his tenure in office, said 18 of 21 drug
categories showed decreases.

ADVERTISEMENT He estimated that statewide education and enforcement
efforts have prevented 78,000 middle- and high-school students from
trying marijuana since he took office in 1999.

"It's important to turn kids away from drugs early," said Bush.
"Studies show that if we keep young people off drugs until 21, they
have a significantly better chance of staying drug- and alcohol-free
for the rest of their lives."

Bush said at a news conference that his coming budget for 2006-07
will include $309 million for enforcement and prevention programs.
John Daigle, director of the Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Association, said the public saves about $7 for each dollar spent on
treatment.About the research

The annual survey is conducted among a demographically representative
sampling of sixth-through 12th-graders in urban and rural counties,
with appropriate numbers of students from various grade levels and
ethnic groups. McDonough said some trick questions were slipped into
the 8,501 surveys - to trip up kids who were concealing or exaggerating.

McDonough and Bush expressed alarm at high levels of drinking among
teen-agers. The drug chief said it was encouraging that most young
people are not using any kind of illegal substances - but that too
few of them know that - and he warned that girls have caught up with
boys in some drug use, and surpassed them in alcohol, tobacco and
depressant categories.

"Alcohol abuse among young people is way too high," said Bush. "It is
a significant problem for our state and for our country."

He added that "we've seen an increase in the number of people of
every age who are abusing prescription drugs," and renewed his call
for the Legislature to pass laws tracking multiple prescriptions and
excessive refills.

"There are more people that die of overdoses of prescription drugs
than any other form of death now in our state," said Bush. "It is
important for us to focus on this."

Aside from actual usage numbers, McDonough said he was worried about
a misperception that most kids use drugs - and an attitude that
alcohol use isn't all that bad. He said 95 percent of students said
drug use generally was "wrong" or "very wrong," but that only 62
percent thought that way about booze.

"What our kids don't understand is, most of our kids don't do drugs
and they don't drink. That's what this is showing, particularly in
middle school," said McDonough. "I can't tell you how corrosive it is
among children who think that most of their peers are using drugs,
and therefore they should."

He said marijuana use among boys is still slightly higher than among
girls. But he said smoking and drinking is now higher among
girls.Girls stats cause alarm

"The clear trend that we've picked up this year is that our girls are
doing worse than our boys; another way to put that is, we've been
more successful in reaching the boys and convincing them to walk away
from it," said McDonough. "In the area of alcohol, at this point,
there are more girls drinking than boys drinking."

He said "the most alarming finding of the survey" was use of
depressants among girls.

"For some reason, girls feel more self-conscious, more separated from
their peers than society as a whole, and are turning to depressants
to self-medicate," he said. "That's just one theory."

Tallahassee deputy police chief Rafael Hernandez said the continued
decline in total use showed that "the education component is
working." But he said the attitude among young people that everyone
uses drugs, and that alcohol is not so bad, "is one thing we need to
keep working on."

"That's something that has to be done in partnership with the parents," he said.