DETROIT MAYORAL DEBATE: KILPATRICK'S COMMENTS ON DRUG USE IN OAKLAND TICK
OFF PATTERSON

Oakland Co. Exec Demands Apology

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson is demanding an apology from
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick after Kilpatrick's comment Thursday that
suburban schoolkids are using more LSD, ecstasy and methamphetamines than
young Detroiters.

During a debate with mayoral challenger Freman Hendrix, Kilpatrick said:
"In Birmingham, in Bloomfield Hills and all these places, they do more
meth, they do more ecstasy and they do more acid than all the schools in
the city of Detroit put together."

After the debate, Kilpatrick said he was not being divisive: "I merely
wanted to point out to everybody that this is a problem everywhere.
Children are depressed in Macomb County just like in Detroit. Children are
using drugs in Oakland County just like in Detroit. And we can't continue
to keep doing this 'us versus them' and 'those people down there.' "

That did not satisfy Patterson, who has scheduled a news conference for
this morning to demand an apology: "He's the one who just did the
us-versus-them thing," he said.

Drug abuse experts said Kilpatrick is probably right about suburban
schoolkids using those drugs more often, but it makes little difference.

"City or suburb, bottom line -- there's abuse everywhere," said Susan
Hiltz, executive director of PREVCO, an anti-drug abuse coalition. "It just
looks different in different communities."

Hiltz and others dealing with young people's illicit drug use said the
drugs of choice may differ from community to community, but the problem
crosses racial and ethnic lines as easily as it does 8 Mile.

"It may be a 40-ounce in the city and a wine cooler in the suburb, but both
communities need help," Hiltz said.

Lisa Machesky of the Birmingham Bloomfield Community Coalition, a group
that addresses a variety of youth issues, said a recent survey of high
schoolers in those cities showed their drug use was in line with national
use, as shown in the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future annual
drug-use study.

The 2004 national survey showed that 3.1% of white 10th-graders had used
ecstasy in the past 12 months, compared with 0.9% of black 10th-graders.
The figures were about the same for methamphetamine use. The study found
that 1.9% of white 10th-graders had taken LSD in the past year, compared
with 0.4% of black 10th-graders.

Alcohol and marijuana use was much higher for both groups. Among white
10th-graders, 37.8% had used alcohol in the previous 30 days, and 28.2% had
smoked marijuana in the past 12 months. Among black 10th-graders, the rates
were 24.6% for alcohol and 27% for marijuana.

"Any drug use is too much," Machesky said.

Blake Angove, an outpatient therapist at the Maplegrove Center in West
Bloomfield, said the mayor's comments are not far off base, but the
different drug use appears to be a general matter of taste.

Angove said he sees little methamphetamine use, but suburban kids do use
more related drugs, such as Ritalin. Ecstasy use is declining, he said, and
LSD use is not widespread in the suburbs.

But, he said, alcohol and marijuana use transcends city-suburb divisions:
"It's across the board."

Carl Taylor, a Michigan State University professor of sociology, said
trying to dice the situation along city-suburban borders "loses sight of
the larger issue: Kids are in trouble everywhere."