INHALANTS, NOT SMOKING, FASTEST GROWING ABUSE AMONG AMERICAN TEENS

WASHINGTON - Fewer teenagers are smoking cigarettes or using illegal
drugs, but a survey released Tuesday shows a troubling increase in the
use of inhalants by younger adolescents.

The smoking rate among younger teens is half what it was in the
mid-1990s, and drug use by that group is down by one-third, according
to the University of Michigan study, done for the National Institute
on Drug Abuse. Less dramatic strides have been made among older teens.

Health experts and government officials called the annual survey of
eighth, 10th and 12th-graders a sign of continued progress in the
effort to reduce youth drug use and said further declines would come
only with a sustained public education campaign about the consequences
of drug abuse.

Overall, illicit drug use among teens declined by 7 percent over the
past year, and 17 percent over the last four years. There are now
600,000 fewer teens using drugs than there were in 2001.

"These are sustained, broad and deep declines," national drug policy
director John Walters said at a news conference. "The challenge before
us is to follow through."

Altogether, gains in 2004 over 2003 were modest. Researchers are
troubled by increases - especially among eighth-graders - in the use
of inhalants such as glue and aerosols, and a rise in the use of the
pain-control narcotic OxyContin. Use of most other drugs declined or
held steady.

Alarmed by inhalants

Health officials said they are concerned that use of inhalants, which
are easily accessible to children, may rebound unless children are
warned about the grave dangers they pose. Inhalant use had been
declining since 1995, when the Partnership for a Drug-Free America
began an anti-inhalant media campaign.

"Research has found that even a single session of repeated inhalant
abuse can disrupt heart rhythms and cause death from cardiac arrest or
lower oxygen levels enough to cause suffocation," said Nora Volkow,
director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Researchers also noted the apparent growing popularity of OxyContin, a
powerful and potentially addictive synthetic narcotic. Up to 5 percent
of 12th-graders and smaller percentages of younger teens reported
having tried it in the last year, the study showed. By contrast, 1
percent or less of teens had tried heroin in a year.

The survey found 15 percent of eighth-graders, 31 percent of
10th-graders and 39 percent of 12th-graders had used drugs in the
previous year - down 1 percentage point or less from the year before.

This was the eighth consecutive year that smoking rates among surveyed
teens dropped, a turnaround that began in 1996 among students in
grades eight and 10 and a year later among 12th-graders.

The look of success

Researchers credited higher cigarette prices, tighter marketing
practices, anti-smoking ads and withdrawal of the Joe Camel logo among
reasons smoking has fallen out of favor with more teens. Close to
three-quarters of surveyed 12th graders now say they'd rather not date
a smoker, up from close to two-thirds in 1977.

"When smoking makes a teen less attractive to the great majority of
the opposite sex, as now appears to be the case, one of the
long-imagined benefits for adolescent smoking is seriously undercut,"
said Lloyd Johnston, lead researcher for the Monitoring the Future
study.

Overall, the percentage of eighth-graders who had ever tried
cigarettes declined to 28 percent this year, down half a percentage
point from 2003 and from a peak of 49 percent in 1996.

The study questioned 50,000 students in about 400 schools
nationwide.

Lloyd Johnston, lead researcher for the Monitoring the Future study.