DATE: Wednesday, October 29, 1997           TAG: 9710290007

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   56 lines

RED RIBBON WEEK ANTI-DRUG PRESCRIPTIONS

Drug abuse by adolescents commands fewer headlines today than in the 1980s, when crack cocaine and gang violence related to it multiplied inner-city miseries. But drug abuse is still a concern, especially when news reports note increased illicit-drug consumption by U.S. youths.

Alcohol is far and away the drug most widely abused by young people. Both alcohol and and illicit drugs and their perils to lives, fortunes and reputations are again in the spotlight during this national Red Ribbon Week.

Americans are jaded by all the special weeks and special months. Proclamations without end flow from presidents, governors and mayors.

But these manufactured occasions - marked, as during Red Ribbon Week - by marching and in candlelight vigils and classroom discussions - spread enlightenment about hazards and achievements that can easily be overlooked by a busy people who, in poet T.S. Eliot's memorable formulation, are ``distracted from distraction by distraction.''

Education more than law enforcement is the key to curbing drug use. Two previous U.S. cocaine epidemics waned when ordinary people learned from observing the drug's ravages to steer clear of it.

Most Americans are not ensnared by either alcohol or illicit drugs. Of 264 million of us, an estimated 11.4 million use illicit drugs and about 10 million are problem drinkers. The goal of Red Ribbon Week is to shrink those numbers, to shrink the toll in blood, tears and treasure exacted by them.

Data provided by the Norfolk Police Assisted Community Enforcement outreach arm indicate that 39 percent of high-school seniors rightly believe that great risk is associated with heavy party drinking, but 45 percent of seniors believe their peers approve of such drinking, and 91 percent have tried alcohol.

Youth tends to consider itself immortal, a delusion that experience cures in those who survive. The herculean challenge is to persuade imprudent youths to curb recklessness. Not easy. But parents, peers, educators and others can help curb it by giving loving attention to youngsters heading for trouble.

Sixty-five percent of high-school seniors are drinkers, 23 percent are marijuana users and 6 percent are cocaine users. Young users of alcohol are breaking the law, as are all users of illicit drugs, as well as hazarding their health and safety. Worrisome.

But as researchers have learned, there are ways to lessen adolescent drug use. Healthy parent-child attachments, appropriate parental supervision, commitment to school, academic success and friends imbued with conventional values provide youngsters with the inner resources to shun destructive behavior.

Chaotic households, incompetent parenting, academic failure and perverse peer influences increase the risk that children will go astray, to their sorrow and everyone else's.

Families, schools, neighborhoods and religious institutions can foster wholesomeness, and a great many do. The more the better.

These are among the messages Red Ribbon Week conveys. Amplify them. Heed them.

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