FEDS: FIRST-TIME MARIJUANA USERS RISK SERIOUS ADDICTION

MIAMI - Fewer adolescents are first-time marijuana users than in previous
years, but those that are risk succumbing to long-term drug addiction,
according to a federal report released Wednesday.

John P. Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, released the report after touring The Village, a drug
treatment center in Miami.

The study, based on the 1999 and 2000 National Household Surveys on Drug
Abuse, indicates that first-time marijuana use among the young is often a
pathway to marijuana addiction or addiction to more potent drugs such as
cocaine or heroin, Walters said.

"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 aged 26 or older were
first-time marijuana users by the age of 14.

But advocates of legalizing marijuana call Walters' gateway theory one of
the oldest myths in drug policy.

According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws,
based in Washington D.C., only one out of every 104 first-time marijuana
users ever use heroin or cocaine. The research is based on numbers from the
National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"The theory that once you use marijuana your brain craves harder drugs is
the perpetuation of a long tortured myth," said Allen St. Pierre, the
group's executive director.

St. Pierre said Walters was manipulating federally funded research to
preserve the status quo.

"If you want good drug war coverage," St. Pierre added, "you go to Miami."

But Matthew Gissen, founder of The Village, said all of the adults at his
center grappling with drug addiction first used marijuana.

"At one time or another everyone we've treated here has used marijuana and
progressed onto other drugs that eventually brought them to our doorstep,"
Gissen said.

Gissen founded the cloistered center, decked with a fountain and street
signs reading "Serenity Place" and "Gratitude Place," on the site of a Sea
Horse Motel in the 1970s.

The center currently treats 200 people for drug abuse.

Despite officials' emphasis on teens at risk, federal statistics show there
was an overall decline in the number of first-time marijuana users aged 12
to 17 in 1996-1999, and the average age of first-time use in 1999 was 17,
up from 16 in the mid-90s.

Approximately 2 million Americans ages 12 or older used marijuana for the
first time in 1999, down from 2.5 million the previous year, but higher
than the 1.4 million recorded in 1989.

The rate of first-time marijuana use declined through the late 1990s among
most ethnic groups except American Indians and Alaska Natives, whose
initiation rates have shown a continuous increase.

Florida ranks among nine states with the lowest rate of new marijuana
users. New Mexico has the highest rate, and Louisiana the lowest.

Analyst Jim Hall said there's been an overall decline of first-time use
among adolescents in Miami-Dade County since county officials started
tracking and addressing initiation rates in 1995.

But he said there's a rise in the use of "club drugs" such as ecstasy that
have acquired a dangerous nightlife cachet.