DRUG POLICY EMPHASIZES TREATMENT

WASHINGTON - The federal drug control policy director is urging schools to
offer help to students who use drugs, not just toss them out. Guidelines in
a report released yesterday by the Office of National Drug Control Policy
urge treatment and counseling for drug-using high schoolers rather than
simply suspending or expelling them. ''The goal is to say we believe we can
do a better job of making kids healthy,'' said John P. Walters, director of
the office. Kicking students out of school without treatment can create
''drug-using dropouts,'' an even bigger problem, the report said. The
advice challenges policies in many districts that automatically suspend or
expel students caught with drugs.

The new policy was announced a day after the agency released a separate
report in Miami showing a decline in first-time marijuana users last year.
While that study found that fewer adolescents are first-time marijuana
users than in previous years, it said those who are risk succumbing to
long-term drug addiction. ''Marijuana is not the soft drug,'' Walters said.
He said government, community agencies, and parents must marshal their
powers to prevent and treat marijuana abuse.

According to the study, 62 percent of cocaine users age 26 or older were
first-time marijuana users by the age of 14. The idea that marijuana leads
to harder drugs was challenged by the National Organization for the Reform
of Marijuana Laws, based in Washington, which said that only 1 out of every
104 first-time marijuana users ever uses heroin or cocaine.

While the study released yesterday provides guidelines for handling student
drug users, final decisions on what to do remain in the hands of school
districts.

Dan Langan, an Education Department spokesman, said, ''The guide is a tool
and it's a helpful tool, but how a district and a school choose to
implement any recommendations in the guide is up to them.'' Kathleen Lyons,
spokeswoman for the National Education Association, said her group would
back the new guidelines. ''That's what we would endorse - helping kids, not
simply punishing them,'' she said. ''It doesn't do anybody any good just to
take a drug test and kick the kid out of school - where's he going to go?
It doesn't solve anyone's problem and may in fact worsen it.'' The Supreme
Court ruled 5-4 in June that schools can require students to submit to drug
tests before participating in competitive after-school activities, even if
they have no particular reason to suspect wrongdoing. Drug tests had been
allowed previously just for student athletes.