DRUG ABUSE TREBLES AMONG EASTERN EUROPEAN TEENAGERS: UN

VIENNA -- Eastern European teenagers are fast catching up with their
Western counterparts' drug habits, taking three times as many hard drugs as
they did in 1995, a United Nations report revealed.

"Drug use among 15- to 16-year-olds (Europe-wide) increased by more than 40
percent over the 1995 to 1999 period ... mainly a result of the doubling of
drug use rates in East Europe," the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime
Prevention (ODCCP) said in the report.

The number of teenagers using drugs other than cannabis in Eastern Europe
more than trebled during the same period, the ODCCP reported.

"Heroin use, both in terms of smoking and injecting, is already more common
in east than in West Europe. Smoking heroin is more than twice as common in
East Europe than in West Europe," the report said.

In Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Russia heroin is the most
popular drug among 15- to 16-year-olds. The highest rate of injecting
heroin among that age group was reported from the Russian Federation, it said.

Many Eastern European countries are on trafficking routes bringing opiates
grown in Afghanistan via Central Asia to Western Europe, AFP reported.

Teenagers in Eastern European countries with comparatively high standards
of living, such as Slovenia and the Czech Republic, took the most drugs,
according to the report.

Thirty-five percent of Czech teens took drugs, the second largest
percentage in Europe along with France.

That rate was only topped by Britain which, at 36 percent, had the largest
percentage of teenage drug-users.

The number of 15- to 16-year-olds taking illegal drugs also doubled in
Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia from 1995 to 1999 and
climbed from three to 15 percent in Lithuania.

Across Europe amphetamine-type stimulants were "the drugs of choice among
15- to 16-year-olds", with a notable preference among Polish and Czech
youngsters, the report said.

It said cocaine was far more common in Western than Eastern Europe.

While the numbers of European youngsters taking drugs are rising sharply,
they have not yet reached the levels of their counterparts in the United
States.

Eighteen percent of young Europeans take drugs, compared to 45 percent of
U.S. teenagers, among whom drug use has declined slightly since 1997, the
report said.