MORE YOUNG PEOPLE USING ILLEGAL DRUGS, SURVEY FINDS

WASHINGTON - Use of marijuana, cocaine and other illegal drugs
increased among young Americans last year, according to a new
government survey. The study also found a sharp increase in the
nonmedical use of a prescription painkiller. Only tobacco use declined.

John P. Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, attributed the increased marijuana use to "a
fundamental misunderstanding" propagated by baby boomers that
marijuana was safe and should be legal. "We have sent the wrong
message and we have to correct that," Walters said.

The findings, contained in the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug
Abuse, are based on interviews with 70,000 people 12 and older.

The percentage of those who said they were marijuana users rose to 5.4
percent in 2001, from 4.8 percent in 2000. The numbers had held
roughly steady between 1996 and 2000. Cocaine users went to 0.07
percent, from 0.05 percent.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said the
worrisome factor in the marijuana increase was a spurt in first-time
users last year, most of them under 18. The number, about 2.4 million,
is down from a mid-1970s peak of 3.2 million, but it is more than in
most of the 1990s.

"Marijuana is not some harmless chemical toy but a clear and present
danger to the health and well-being of all its users," Thompson said.

Overall, 15.9 million Americans over age 12 reported using an illicit
drug in the month before being interviewed. That amounts to 7.1
percent of that population group in 2001, up from 6.3 percent in 2000.
Nearly a fifth of 18-to-25-year-olds said they used illicit drugs.

Use of the hallucinogen ecstasy and abuse of the prescription
painkiller Oxycontin both have more than tripled since 1998.

Thompson said the good news was a continuing decline in smoking among
12-to-17-year-olds. Their number is about one-third lower than it was
in 1997.

Otherwise, "we lost a lot of ground in the Nineties," said Charles
Curie, director of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration, the HHS agency that sponsors the annual study. Curie
blamed acceptance of marijuana and peer pressure for the upsurge.

Thompson said, "When you start with marijuana, it is easy to get to
the next step."

In response to the rise in drug use, the administration proposes to
increase funding to antidrug campaigns, community organizations and
faith-based groups, he said.

A special committee of the Canadian Senate reached the opposite
conclusion about marijuana in findings disclosed Wednesday. It
concluded marijuana was less harmful than alcohol and not a drug that
commonly leads to more serious drugs.

According to the committee's report, criminalizing marijuana use is
"an utterly irrational restraint that has nothing to do with
scientific or public health considerations."

Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a
Washington-based group that wants the drug to be legal but regulated,
suggested that the Canadians were right.

"It is at least worth discussing the possibility that what we are
doing is not working," he said. "But we have our government refusing
to discuss it."