Pubdate: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 Source: USA Today (US) Page: 12A Copyright: 2008 The Associated Press Contact: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466 Author: David N. Goodman, The Associated Press Cited: Institute for Social Research http://www.isr.umich.edu/ Cited: NORML http://www.norml.org/ Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Monitoring+the+Future Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana) NIXON-ERA PROGRAM ON TEEN DRUG USE GOING STRONG Project That Asks Kids About Habits 'Unparalleled in Its Importance' HAMBURG TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- President Nixon may not have dented the nation's drug epidemic when he named Elvis Presley a "federal agent at large" in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in 1970. But a $120 million research program born in the Nixon administration continues to shape America's drug policies. It all started with a 33-year-old psychology graduate student's plan to poll thousands of teens nationwide each year about their drug habits and beliefs. Lloyd Johnston, now 67, still runs that study from the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. His group recently won a $33 million National Institute on Drug Abuse grant to continue through 2012. "It's just unparalleled in its importance in our field," said Tom Hendrick, founding director of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. The group launched the iconic TV ads showing a frying egg and a narrator who says, "This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?" The study owes its birth to Nixon drug czar Robert DuPont, who read Johnston's 1973 book Drugs and American Youth and invited the research assistant to brief his staff. Johnston pitched DuPont the idea he and colleague Jerald Bachman dreamed up of asking teens across the country about their drug, alcohol and tobacco habits and attitudes. "I said, 'We've got to do this, and Lloyd is the guy to do it,' " said DuPont, a psychiatrist and head of the Institute for Behavior and Health in Rockville, Md. The project was approved in August 1974. The first "Monitoring the Future" surveys were conducted the following spring. Released in late 1975, the results gave the nation a first comprehensive look at what its children were smoking, popping and drinking: 40% of high school seniors said they had used marijuana in the past 12 months, and 45% had taken an illicit drug in that time. From the start, the annual studies drew intense media coverage, Johnston said. "NBC put on a one-hour special called, 'Reading, Writing and Reefer,' " said Johnston, who has a master's degree in business from Harvard University. It "had a few talking heads like me" and lots of "kids who were heavy dope users." "Anybody ... could see that they weren't functioning right cognitively," he said. "I think it was one of the most effective prevention tools." Teens' perception of the physical and psychological risks of marijuana began rising and their use rates started falling, the studies found. Twelfth-graders' marijuana use peaked in 1979 at 51% and stood at 32% last year. "Because Americans took action, today there are an estimated 860,000 fewer children using drugs than six years ago," President Bush said at a December White House address announcing the Michigan study's 2007 findings. The 45-minute confidential questionnaires are given to 50,000 students in eighth, 10th and 12th grade each year, and there are cumulative data on more than 1 million students. The Council of Europe began a similar study 15 years ago -- a project that now involves 45 countries. Around the world, researchers have drawn from the study methods used by Johnston's group. "They are idols for some of us," Gerhard Gmel, a senior scientist at the Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug Problems, said from Lausanne, Switzerland. Even a leading voice for legalizing marijuana expressed "high esteem" for Johnston's work. "Johnston cannot be controlled, cannot be manipulated in the way other federal researchers can," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, a non-profit public-interest lobby. Thirty-three years of data have convinced Johnston that the single best way to cut teen drug abuse is to get information on drug dangers into the hands of teens. Focusing primarily on cutting supply won't work, he said. Perhaps surprisingly, Johnston said teen smoking, not teen drug abuse, probably is where his group's work has made the most difference. Most of the 400,000 Americans killed by smoking each year started as young people. Public alarm after Johnston documented a spike in smoking by young teens in the "Joe Camel" era of the early 1990s helped drive 1998's $206 billion tobacco industry settlement. That agreement with the states prohibited the targeting of youth in cigarette ads. "That's probably our most important contribution," he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake