TEENAGER RECALLS SPELL MARIJUANA CAST OVER HER

Maggie didn't plan to smoke marijuana. But she invited a friend to
sleep over one night, and the friend showed up with some pot, a little
something from her older sister.

Maggie was 14 years old. Her parents hadn't warned her about drugs
except to say, "Don't do them," words that had no impact. If she'd had
any drug education in school, it hadn't stuck with her.

Looking back now at age 18, after five months of a 10-month
residential drug treatment program at the Cornell Abraxas Center for
Adolescent Females, she realizes that she really didn't know anything
about marijuana.

"I wanted to fit in with everybody," said Maggie, who lives in the
Pittsburgh area. "I just started experimenting. And I had some other
family problems, and I thought it could help me."

That's just the kind of experience that is putting representatives of
the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, part of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, on the road in 24 cities this summer,
trying to fight the pop-culture image of marijuana as a drug that's
relatively harmless. The agency did a study a year and a half ago
showing that of the marijuana references in the news, only 6 percent
dealt with negative impacts. It found little information about studies
showing that today's marijuana is seven to 14 times more potent than
what was available at Woodstock. Or that recent research into brain
development shows that marijuana can cause bigger problems for
teenagers than originally thought.

Or that 38 percent of Pennsylvania youths 12 to 17 who entered drug
treatment centers in 2001 had a primary diagnosis of marijuana
dependency. "There are too many people who think of it as a rite of
passage," Marianne Turkal, assistant program director for the Cornell
Abraxas program Maggie attends, said during yesterday's program in
Pittsburgh. "When you've come to accept that everybody does it, it's a
rite of passage, you're basically lost."

Ralph Tarter, the director of the Center for Education and Drug Abuse
Research at the University of Pittsburgh, stressed that he didn't want
to exaggerate the addictiveness of marijuana. Between 10 percent and
20 percent of users will become addicted, he said, adding that the
number is comparable to the number of cigarette smokers who eventually
develop lung cancer.

"And that's not to say that the intermediate stages are irrelevant,"
he said.

Regular marijuana use, he said, affects the frontal lobes of the brain
and "damages the ability to meet challenges in everyday society,"
something he believes is particularly dangerous in a high-tech
society. It can reduce the efficiency of the immune system and induce
panic attacks, which can occur when the brain loses the ability to
evaluate risks. There are some negative effects on the reproductive
and endocrine systems, as well.

Marijuana addiction, Turkal said, is particularly subtle, unlike
cocaine or heroin. When deprived of marijuana, addicts don't shake or
throw up or walk around with bloodshot eyes. But not only does it lead
to trying strong drugs, it can cause problems on its own.

"Nobody volunteers for addiction," Turkal said. "It creeps up on you."
Which is exactly what happened to Maggie.

Six months after her first hit of marijuana, she was using pills and
beginning to try heroin. She quit her job, and with a "good" cut of
marijuana costing about $50 (and lasting only a few hours), she began
stealing to support her habit. Usually calm, she became angry.

She slept a lot. Stayed home from school "sick" more often. Stayed out
late. Sometimes when she was with her friends, they would say, "Let's
try to stay sober." They always failed, she said, unable to find
something else interesting to do. "Especially in the winter," she
said. "I always relapsed in the winter."

Her grades dropped. Two teachers pulled her aside after class, asking
first if there were anything she wanted to talk about and then, flat
out, "Are you on drugs?"

Maggie responded, "Are you crazy?" and left the discussions believing
she had tricked the teachers.

"I thought I was slick," she said. "I thought I wasn't obvious. I
think deep down, I knew it was obvious. But I was in denial. I got
real defensive." Repeated attempts from her parents to stop her drug
use failed. Last summer, after two years of use, she went to a 30-day
boot camp, which didn't work. Then she attended three outpatient
rehabilitation programs, none of which helped, either, because she
continued to use drugs on the program's off days. "It was more like
aftercare," she said.

Only now, in the residential program, does Maggie believe she is truly
making progress. And she's thinking about her addiction and how she
could have avoided it.

More education is primary -- and not just from school lectures. Maggie
thinks if more musical groups were making it a point to mention the
dangers of marijuana, and if her parents had provided her with more
specifics at a younger age, she would have better prepared to deal
when she was offered the pot.

"We tend in this country to concentrate on one drug at a time," Turkal
said. "Others came to the forefront after the '70s and the '80s, and
now the numbers show that marijuana is up."

Maggie wasn't a member of any organized school groups or athletic
teams, either. "I think that would have helped me," she said. "I
didn't feel like I fit in."

Once she tried drugs, she said, there was little anyone could do.
"Once I started, I didn't care what my parents had to say," she said.
"They had to take action."

After treatment, however, Maggie better appreciates her parents, which
is something the government campaign wants to bring to the forefront.
Parents, the commercials and brochures stress, can be the "anti-drug"
- -- what keeps teenagers sober.

Maggie believes it. She said of her parents, "I think they're my only
true friends."