TEENS TURNING FROM VIOLENCE BUT NOT FROM SMOKING, COKE

ATLANTA - Injury and violence-related behaviors among teenagers have
fallen, but more teens are using cocaine and regularly smoking and
drinking, according to a recent survey.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined the behavior of
13,600 high school students from across the country for the annual survey,
which was released Thursday.

Nearly half of the teens surveyed said they'd consumed more than one
alcoholic beverage more than once in the month before the survey. But an
increasing number are also wearing seat belts and refusing to ride with a
driver who's been drinking.

The number of teenagers who said they had tried cocaine in their lifetime
rose to 9.4 percent, up from 5.9 percent in 1991. About 4.2 percent of
students said they had used cocaine in the past 30 days, up from 1.7
percent in 1991.

"We still have plenty of work to do," said Laura Kann, a researcher with
the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

About 46 percent of teenagers said they'd had sex, down from 54 percent in
the 1991 survey. The percentage of sexually active teenagers who had used a
condom increased from 46 percent to 58 percent from 1991 to 1999, but
remained at 58 percent through 2001.

The findings point to a failure of "abstinence-only" sex-education programs
favored by the Bush administration, said James Wagoner, president of
Advocates for Youth, a Washington nonprofit group that supports both
abstinence and birth-control education for teenagers.

"The implication is clear and yet, the current administration ignores it.
If you give young people information about how to protect themselves, they
use it," Wagoner said in a statement.

Other survey findings:

* The number of teenagers who said they never or rarely wore a seat belt
fell from 25.9 percent to 14.1 percent.

* The number of teenagers who said they rode with a driver who had been
drinking fell from 39.9 percent to 30.7 percent.

* The percentage of teenagers in daily physical education class fell from
41.6 percent in 1991 to 32.2 percent a decade later.

* The percentage of students who carried a weapon decreased from 26.1
percent in 1991 to 17.4 percent in 2001.