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ALCOHOL, MARIJUANA USE DOWN FOR TEENS

But State Survey Shows Smokeless Tobacco Use Up

INDIANAPOLIS -- Fewer middle and high school students are drinking alcohol or using marijuana and other drugs, but more in grades 9-12 are trying smokeless and pipe tobacco, an annual survey shows.

Surveys completed this spring by 131,017 public and private school students in grades 6-12 show students at all levels generally were using alcohol and marijuana less than in previous years, and students in grades 6-8 used tobacco products less, according to the survey released Monday by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center at Indiana University in Bloomington.

A decline in cigarette use among high school students that was detected last year held steady this year, the survey showed, but the use of smokeless tobacco increased for grades 9-12 and pipe smoking increased for 10th-graders and older.  Among 12th-graders, for example, 9.8 percent admitted using smokeless tobacco at least once a month, compared with 8.6 percent last year, and 4.6 said they smoked tobacco in pipes, up from 3.7 percent.

"A shift may be occurring in the manner in which tobacco is used," said Ruth Gassman, executive director of the IU center.

Several years of steadily declining alcohol use among 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders continued this year, but a higher percentage of high school seniors engaged in binge drinking.  This year, 27.3 percent acknowledged they had had at least five drinks in one sitting during the two weeks before they completed the survey, compared with 25.9 percent last year.

Alcohol is the most common of the so-called gateway drugs, with 70.2 percent of 12th-graders this year saying they had had a drink at least once in their lives, compared with 72.3 percent in 2005.  Among sixth-graders this year, 25.2 percent reported having at least one drink, down from 26.1 percent last year.

Bill Stanczykiewicz, president of the Indiana Youth Institute advocacy group, said the survey showed steadily declining use of each of the gateway drugs among sixth-graders over the past decade.

"They're all moving in the right direction over 10 years, and that's great news," Stanczykiewicz said.

"It should bode very well as these kids get older and move into high school."

Olgen Williams, executive director of Indianapolis' Christamore House and an activist for the welfare of urban youth, said lots of the teenagers coming through the doors of his community center admit smoking marijuana, but few smoke cigarettes.  He said they don't consider marijuana a drug as serious as, say, crack cocaine.

"We still have a lot of work to do, and we can't be afraid to set reasonable boundaries for children," Williams said.