Pubdate: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 Source: Honolulu Advertiser (HI) Copyright: 2002 The Honolulu Advertiser, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. Contact: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/195 Author: Justin Bachman, Associated Press SURVEY SHOWS RISE IN TEEN DRINKING, SMOKING ATLANTA -- More teenagers are using cocaine and regularly smoking and drinking, but an increasing number are also wearing seat belts and refusing to ride with drivers who have been drinking, according to a survey released yesterday. The annual survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in schools across the country, examined the behavior of 13,600 high school students The survey found injury and violence-related behaviors have fallen, but children still regularly smoke and drink -- nearly half said they'd consumed more than one alcoholic beverage more than once in the month before the survey. 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. That points to a failure of "abstinence-only" sex-education programs favored by the White House, 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," Wagoner said in a statement. "If you give young people information about how to protect themselves, they use it." A separate survey of youths' risky behaviors by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center found that a third of 900 teenagers queried said they had either smoked cigarettes or marijuana, drunk alcohol or gambled for money within the past 30 days. Results from the nationwide telephone survey of youths aged 14 and 22 were to be released today by the center's Institute for Adolescent Risk Communications. The survey was conducted in May and June by Schulman, Ronca & Bucuvalas. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. Other findings from the CDC survey: *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. ------ On the Web: CDC Morbidity/Mortality weekly report www.cdc.gov/mmwr - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom