THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 10, 1996 TAG: 9609100257
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 106 lines
Two-thirds of baby-boomer parents who experimented with marijuana as teen-agers expect their own children will do the same, and many say parents have too little influence to stop them, according to a survey released Monday.
The findings, from the first national survey to simultaneously ask parents and teen-agers about their attitudes toward drugs, come just weeks after the government announced a doubling of teen drug use.
``That the baby boomers appear to be so ambivalent and so resigned to drug use by kids is very disturbing,'' said Joseph Califano of Columbia University's Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, which sponsored the survey. ``They should be mad as hell. Instead, they're saying there's nothing we can do about it.''
But some parents didn't think the poll painted them so badly.
``It's not so much that people are resigned; I think they're realistic,'' said Barbara Barrett of Rockville, Md., who has a 16-year-old daughter. ``Drugs are everywhere, and that's hard.''
About 1,200 teen-agers and an equal number of parents were questioned in the survey, which was conducted by Luntz Research Cos.
Conducted in July and August, the survey had a 2.8 percentage-point margin of error for the teens and a 2.9 margin for the parents.
Almost half of the parents surveyed - 49 percent - had tried marijuana in their youth.
Overall, 46 percent of the parents surveyed said they expect their teens to try illegal drugs.
When researchers looked only at the parents who had experimented with marijuana, akin to a rite of passage for many baby boomers, the numbers jumped.
About 65 percent of parents who used marijuana regularly as teens believe their own children will use drugs, as do 62 percent who experimented with marijuana in their youth. Among parents who never tried marijuana, only 29 percent believe their children will try drugs.
When asked whether it is a crisis for someone under 16 to smoke marijuana, 83 percent of parents who never tried pot themselves said yes - but only 58 percent of parents who smoked marijuana regularly as teens were similarly alarmed.
Forty percent of parents said they have little influence over their teen's decision to use drugs, saying peer pressure and society play greater roles.
Studies have shown that public perceptions about drug use do forecast the future, said Dr. Richard Heyman, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' substance abuse committee.
If parents expect their children to try drugs, ``there's not going to be enough negative parental influence'' to fight it, he said.
Worse is if teens are saying, ``Gee, Dad, didn't you use drugs?'' added Heyman, who counsels parents not to let their past become the issue. ``The answer to that is, `That's not relevant.' What's relevant is that our kids have to be given a no-use message.''
Califano, who was President Carter's health secretary, argued that parents also may not know that the marijuana of the 1960s and '70s was not as strong as pot sold today.
As for the teens themselves, 22 percent said they are likely or somewhat likely to use drugs in the future, up from 11 percent in the Columbia University group's 1995 survey.
Teens also said their schools are not drug-free: 69 percent of 17-year-olds said they go to school where students keep, use or sell drugs, as did 28 percent of 12-year-olds. Yet the teens did rank drug use as the biggest problem facing youth, and 55 percent said using marijuana makes it much more likely for teens to get into trouble.
The study comes in the wake of government research showing that teen-age drug use has been increasing rapidly over the past four years, after a long decline that began in the late 1970s. A widely publicized government survey released last month found that nearly 11 percent of adolescents 12 to 17 years old reported recent drug use, up from 5.3 percent in 1992.
In assessing responsibility for growing drug use among teen-agers, most parents questioned in the Califano survey blamed their children's friends, the teen-agers themselves and society at large. Relatively few parents held themselves accountable.
The study's authors said these parental attitudes, at least in part, reflect ``how realistic parents are regarding their teens' propensity to use drugs.'' Other experts also believe that if parents used drugs themselves, it will influence how they approach their children.
``Parents of a decade ago may have been more likely than today's parents to talk to their children about drugs, because more of today's parents actually used drugs when they were teens and may feel hypocritical telling their own teens not to use,'' said Lloyd D. Johnston, director of the most extensive survey of adolescent attitudes toward drug use, the Monitoring the Future study conducted annually by the University of Michigan.
The fact that the children of parents who smoked marijuana showed a heightened propensity to use drugs coupled with the fact that parents overwhelmingly said they would tell their children of their own past drug use, poses a dilemma.
``The mere acknowledgment by a parent of having used drugs puts the kids into a more at-risk position, even when that acknowledgment is accompanied by a moral lesson,'' said Frank Luntz, who directed the study. ``That begs a serious moral question which boomer parents will be debating for the next decade: `Do you tell them the truth about your own drug use or do you lie?' '' MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The Associated Press, The
Washington Post and Hearst News Service. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
PARENTS WHO HAVE USED DRUGS
PARENTS WHO HAVE NOT
SOURCE: Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: DRUGS ILLEGAL by CNB