Pubdate: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Christopher S. Wren Cited: Partnership for a Drug-Free America: http://drugfreeamerica.org/ Related: http://www.pdfa.net/ MORE TEENAGERS DISAPPROVE OF DRUG USE, SURVEY FINDS Teen-age approval of marijuana and other illegal drugs has started declining, with fewer adolescents saying they consider drug use to be "cool," according to a national study being released Monday. Forty percent of teen-agers surveyed agreed strongly that "kids who are really cool don't use drugs," compared with 35 percent who said so last year. And the number agreeing strongly that "in my school, marijuana users are popular" dropped to 10 percent, from 17 percent last year. Among younger respondents, those 13 to 15 years old, only 8 percent said marijuana users were popular, compared with 13 percent in 1998. The shift is potentially significant because such changes in attitude have become predictors of drug use. A government survey in August reported that drug use was leveling off among teen-agers. The new survey said experimentation with marijuana declined to 41 percent of those surveyed, compared with 42 percent in 1998 and 44 percent in 1997. Experimentation with inhalants, methamphetamine, cocaine and LSD also dropped. Trial use of the drug ecstasy did not. The survey was commissioned by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, a coalition of communications professionals who have created about 600 advertisements and commercials for a campaign that the government began in July 1998 to discourage adolescents from using drugs. The partnership stopped short of attributing the change in attitudes to its role in the campaign, suggesting that the decline in social acceptance of drugs had broader importance. "Across the board, in numerous statistical measures, teen-agers are disassociating drugs from critically important badges of teen identity," James E. Burke, the partnership's chairman, said in a statement. "From a consumer-marketing standpoint, when this type of peer norm begins to develop, it's extremely encouraging," Burke said. "But it's too early to declare a major turnaround on drug-related attitudes and drug use." Still, the study found teen-agers more aware of drugs and the risks they pose. Forty-five percent of the adolescents interviewed said they had seen or heard an advertisement against drugs at least once a day, compared with 32 percent in 1998, when the $195 million campaign was getting under way. The Partnership Attitude Tracking Study, as the annual survey is called, was developed by Audits and Surveys Worldwide, a marketing research company in New York. It asked 6,529 adolescents in the seventh- through the 12th-grades to fill out a questionnaire on how they felt about drugs. The margin of error was plus or minus 1.8 percentage points. More than half of the teen-agers interviewed said they had been offered drugs. But only 11 percent said it was difficult to reject a friend's invitation to try marijuana, compared with 14 percent in the previous four years. And 41 percent of the teen-agers said they had tried to talk a friend out of using drugs, compared with 38 percent in 1998. While some popular music has been criticized for glamorizing drugs, a minority of the adolescents, or 42 percent, agreed that rock and rap stars made drug use look tempting, compared with 48 percent in 1998. In what the partnership called another encouraging development, 30 percent of the teen-agers said they had learned a lot about the risk of drugs from their parents, compared with 27 percent last year. The government's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign has also used advertisements to urge parents to talk with their children about the dangers of drug use. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake