Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 13, 1995                   TAG: 9509130053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TEEN MARIJUANA USE NEARLY DOUBLES

Marijuana use among teen-agers has nearly doubled since 1992, even as adults' use of all illegal drugs leveled off, the government announced Tuesday.

Some 12.2 million people used illegal drugs last year, up from 11.7 million in 1993 and 11.4 million in 1992, said the 1994 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. The increases were not considered statistically significant.

At the same time, 1.8 million teen-agers used illegal drugs last year - the vast majority naming marijuana, which the government survey says is on the rise among young people after 13 years of decline.

About 7.3 percent of teens - 1.3 million ages 12 to 17 - smoked marijuana last year. That's up from 4 percent two years earlier, the survey found. Until 1992, youth marijuana use had declined every year since 1979.

``Anyone who thinks we've licked the drug problem in this country is living in a fantasy land,'' said Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, whose department conducted the survey.

Shalala used the data to attack House-passed budget cuts that would take $700 million away from federal drug-abuse programs. The Senate is considering this week whether to let those cuts stand.

``We hope they remember that drug prevention is a national priority of the very same order as clean water, good roads and safe streets,'' Shalala said.

Marijuana accounts for 81 percent of the nation's drug use, and its rise among teens reflects a growing sense that marijuana is benign, said Lee Brown, President Clinton's drug policy coordinator. Only 42 percent of teen-agers considered marijuana a dangerous drug, down from 50 percent in 1992, the survey found.

``Marijuana is not cool,'' Shalala told students at a Washington, D.C., high school Tuesday. ``Marijuana use is illegal, it's dangerous, it's unhealthy and it's wrong.''

To estimate the prevalence of the use of illegal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, HHS surveyed a nationally representative sample of 22,181 people last year. Drug use was defined as taking a drug sometime in the month before the survey.