KNOWING RISKS, MORE TEENAGERS STAY DRUG-FREE

The Largest Decline In Teen Drug Use In Years Is Capped By 20 Percent Fall
In Ecstasy Use.

NEW YORK - A remarkable thing happened in the past year.

Teen drug and alcohol abuse as well as teen smoking all went down across
the board. Even the use of Ecstasy, the so-called "love drug" that spiked
20 percent in 2001 is on the decline.

While many researchers are surprised, Ginienne Santoro is not. She sees a
change in attitudes in the high school where she's president of her senior
class. Plenty of kids still get high, but it's cool now if you choose not
to. You can still be popular.

That's partly because they have more information, she says. They know that
Ecstasy can leave holes the size of a quarter in your brain. But she
believes the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have also changed the way many
teens think about themselves and the world.

"Kids realized they weren't invincible, this could have happened to them
any time," says Ms. Santoro. "So they started thinking twice about doing
things that could harm themselves."

While that hypothesis may be hard to prove, Lloyd Johnston, the lead
investigator of the Monitoring the Future Study, believes that Santoro is
onto something.

"The hypothesis is that it may have had a sobering effect on young people.
They are looking at life a little more seriously and with a less
celebratory view," says Dr. Johnston of the University of Michigan.
"There's enough things that are consistent with that, that we're inclined
to give that explanation for at least part of the decline."

The Monitoring the Future Study, which is funded by the National Institute
of Drug Abuse, annually surveys over 44,000 students in 8th, 10th, and 12th
grade in more than 400 schools around the country. Over the past five
years, it found the overall illicit drug use had been holding fairly
steady: about 27 percent of 8th graders, 46 percent of 10th-graders and 54
percent of seniors reported some kind of illegal drug use. This year, it
was down in all three grades, with the biggest drop of 2.3 percentage
points for 8th graders.

Researchers say that's a possible indication that teen drug use will
continue to go down over the next few years because drug-abuse trends are
often set at a young age and track with students as they go through school.

One of the biggest drops was in the use of Ecstasy, a change researchers
had expected.

SCARING TEENAGERS WORKS

Historically, there's been a link between how dangerous teenagers think a
drug is and the level of use. For instance, before the decline in crack use
in the late 1980s, the Monitoring the Future Study found that more teens
thought it was a dangerous and destructive drug. For the past five years,
the use of Ecstasy has been increasing annually. It was hyped in the media
as the "love drug" and rumored to have few negative side effects. Then the
science started to come to light - the permanent brain damage and
dehydration that can lead to death.

At Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden, Conn., which Santoro attends, the entire
school was brought into the auditorium for a presentation on the physical
impact of Ecstasy. "After that, kids were like, 'No way,' about using
Ecstasy," she says.

Last year researchers saw an increase in the number of teenagers, such as
Santoro's classmates, who perceived the drug to be dangerous. But it
continued to spread into new communities so overall use rose. This year,
the perception of danger was widespread enough to cause the decline,
researchers say.

The Monitoring the Future Study also found a significant drop in the use of
alcohol, particularly among eighth and 10th-graders. Use was down more than
three percentage points in each class. That surprised researchers and lends
credence to the notion that 9/11 may have impacted teen behavior.

Tobacco use was also down significantly, more than five percentage points
in the eighth and 10th grades and almost four percentage points in the
senior class.

Antismoking advocates say that indicates "unprecedented success" in the
fight to keep young people from lighting up. They credit the implementation
of comprehensive antismoking campaigns and higher cigarette prices.

"We have long standing solid evidence that raising the price of tobacco
will reduce youth smoking and adult consumption," says William Corr of the
Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids in Washington. "We also have solid evidence
that state tobacco prevention programs can significantly reduce youth
smoking in a relatively short period of time."

CULTURAL FACTORS

Drug use, historically, has gone up and down in the United States. Some
researchers attribute the current decrease to better enforcement of alcohol
laws and less availability of some drugs. But they also see some larger
cultural forces at work. "There's also more information about the
importance of taking care of yourself, particularly among younger kids,"
says David Rosenbloom, the director of Join Together, a substance-abuse
research project at Boston University. "And I think parents are talking to
their children more."

While the overall news about drug use dropping is good, Eric Wish of the
Center of Substance Abuse Services at the University of Maryland notes that
it's impossible to define a trend from a one-year change.

"Don't mistake statistical significance with substantive significance," he
says. "Many kids are continuing to use alcohol and marijuana as their
primary drugs, and, as they get older, they're graduating to the club drugs."

Santoro agrees with that observation. It would be easy to do almost any
kind of drug, she says, but she has no interest in them.

"When you see people who use drugs and what happens to them, you really
don't want it to happen to you," she says.