STUDY: MORE YOUTHS USING INHALANTS

STAMFORD -- Cherise Coleman hears it all the time from high school students
she counsels in Stamford: Inhalants, cheap and easy to get, are an
increasing choice for teenagers who want to get high.

Coleman, assistant director of Stamford Youth Options, said one student
told her she was addicted to sniffing the alcohol pads used to clean
wounds. She took them in bunches from doctor's offices, stashed them in her
purse and wiped them over her mouth several times during the school day.

"She had to do it every chance she would get," Coleman said of the girl.
"In the school bathroom, in the bathroom at her boyfriend's house, during
class. To a teacher, it just looks like someone wiping her face."

Today, federal health officials will announce that last year, more 12- and
13-year-olds tried inhalants than marijuana, said Marlene McGann,
co-chairwoman of the Connecticut Inhalant Task Force, which formed in
September.

The announcement will come three months after a University of Michigan
study, sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National
Institutes of Health, showed rates of inhalant use among eighth-, 10th- and
12th-graders are on the rise after a decline in the 1990s.

The news conference will provide background for National Inhalants and
Poisons Week, which starts Sunday.

Inhalants cause about 125 deaths per year in the United States, most the
result of suffocation or the sudden disruption of heart rhythms. Inhalants
deteriorate key parts of the brain in long-term users, said Harvey Weiss,
executive director of the National Inhalants Prevention Coalition.

About a third die the first time they sniff inhalants, Weiss said. Others
died in car accidents while driving under the influence of inhalants or
died in explosions while inhaling gas from propane tanks, said Howard
Wolfe, director of the New England Inhalant Abuse Prevention Coalition.

About 17 percent of all eighth-graders say they have used inhalants. Rates
of use among eighth-graders are rising faster than among older children,
according to the University of Michigan survey of about 50,000 children.

Rates in New England and Connecticut are higher than the national averages,
Wolfe said. Town-by-town rates in Connecticut are not yet available, McGann
said.

States and agencies are scrambling for new strategies to restrict sale of
inhalants and to teach children and parents about the dangers of inhaling
hair spray, lighter fluid and other substances.

"Most adults are shocked at the extent of the problem," Weiss said. "Every
parent that has lost a child says, 'Of all the dangers, I never expected it
to be that one.' "

McGann and Wolfe said treating the problem is difficult because about 1,000
common household products -- almost all legal -- can give a 15- to
30-minute high that is difficult to detect.

Parents may not notice their child poked a hole in the bottom of a canister
of whipped cream to inhale the nitrous oxide propellant inside, McGann
said. And they might find it inconvenient to lock up the dozens of aerosol
cans, magic markers or glues kids can use to get high, she said.

Some states, including Connecticut, have banned the sale of products
containing a high percentage of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, to minors,
Wolfe said. A few have passed bills forcing stores to ask for
identification from anyone buying some of the most common inhalants, he said.

"I don't think it will ever be enough," he said.

McGann said school supplies such as Wite-Out correction fluid can supply a
high. She told counselors the story of one boy, a friend of her son, who
rubbed Wite-Out on his shirt collars so he could sniff it during school.

McGann said teachers must change the way they approach the subject with
children. They should avoid listing common inhalants and showing kids
diagrams where children use plastic bags or inhalant-soaked rags to get high.

One diagram in a third-grade classroom showed a dinosaur named the
"Huff-o-Saurus" with a plastic bag over his mouth and a line of canisters
beside him.

"It was like an instruction manual," she said.

Some instructors favor an in-your-face approach, but Weiss said everyone
has the same goal.

"These things are poisons," he said. "And we all have to teach kids about
how dangerous they really are."