STATE APPEALS TO PARENTS AS STUDY SAYS KIDS DABBLING MORE IN DRUGS

AUSTIN -- One of the worst things parents can do in their effort to keep
their kids away from drugs and alcohol is to fail to clearly state their
opposition to such behavior, experts say.

"Unless you have explicitly said it -- maybe more than once -- they may not
have received the communication that their parents disapprove," said
Richard Spence, assistant deputy director of the Texas Commission on
Alcohol and Drug Abuse. Spence has tracked students' drug use trends since
1988.

All too often, he said, kids justify experimentation by saying their
parents wouldn't care.

Parents should also encourage their kids to take up extracurricular
activities that have a proven record of discouraging drug use.

Last week, the commission released its biennial survey of 107,000 secondary
students, those in grades 7-12, showing widespread dabbling with
mind-altering substances, usually at off-campus parties.

Most students said they had been to parties where alcohol was available,
although the experience was less common for seventh- graders (33 percent)
than high school seniors (73 percent).

"The alcohol use is still very high, but the marijuana use has become
pretty common at parties," Spence said. "A lot of parents wink at alcohol
use among their kids, and kids pick up on that. Kids definitely feel that
it's something they're even expected to do, that's normal for them to do."

The state report listed several well-known "risk factors," such as a
student's poor performance in school, that should alert parents that drugs
might be a problem. But fearful that some families have given up trying to
prevent or curtail their children's drug use, the agency placed unusual
emphasis on steps parents can take to address the problem close to home.

The suggestions included strategies that were proven successful elsewhere
in the nation, as well as ideas that came directly from the teen-agers who
participated in the 1996 statewide survey.

Here are some of the anti-drug tactics recommended by the state:

* Encourage children to take part in extracurricular activities, which
helps them focus on school and burn free time and energy.

* Attend events at your child's school and support the school's activities.
This reassures students about the importance of school.

* Help your child foster healthy relationships with friends.

* Clearly declare your opposition to drugs.

* Support anti-drug programs on campus.

* Emphasize the importance of good grades.

Conversely, the state report identified certain students as being more
likely to use drugs. They include:

* Those who have disciplinary problems.

* Students who rarely participate in extracurricular activities.

* Those who do not think drugs can be dangerous.

* Those who do not think their parents disapprove of drug use.

* Students with easy access to drugs and who think most of their friends
use drugs.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse issued its own list of factors thought
to reduce the risk of teens' involvement with illicit substances. Among
them are strong family bonds, parental monitoring of children's activities,
success in school and involvement in school and religious organizations.

Officials admit none of the proposed remedies is foolproof. For example,
the recent survey documented that Texas students in vocational and
distributive education classes are more likely to use alcohol, tobacco and
marijuana than their schoolmates.

But the flip side of that finding was this: "Secondary students who
participated in band or orchestra reported the lowest lifetime and current
use of all substances except smokeless tobacco," the survey said.

The voluntary poll found that nearly two-thirds of secondary- school
students used illicit substances, including alcohol or tobacco, in the
previous year. Even more -- three out of four -- said they had used some
type of illicit drug in their lifetimes.

"The increases in illicit drug use resulted mostly from rising prevalence
rates among eighth-graders, female students and African-American students,"
the report states. The conclusions are based on responses from students in
72 school districts in Texas.

The poll said marijuana's popularity is soaring, with surprising appeal
among middle-schoolers. Use among eighth-graders has tripled in five years,
the survey said.

After alcohol and tobacco, marijuana was the drug most commonly used by the
public school students surveyed. Overall, 31 percent of secondary students
said they had tried "pot," compared with 20 percent in 1992.

"To the extent that marijuana is a gateway drug to other illicit drugs, the
sharp increase in marijuana use found in this study may be a warning signal
of potential future increases in other illicit drug use," said the report,
authored by researcher Liang Y. Liu.

Liu surmised that rising drug usage "may be partially attributed to more
lax attitudes toward drug use among Texas secondary students, lowered
perceptions of parental disapproval of substance use and the increased
availability of drugs."

Unfortunately, the longer parents wait to address the complex problems that
result in drug abuse, the fewer successful tactics are available to them.

"By the time a youngster is a teen-ager, a lot of your options to really
affect change are gone," Spence said, adding that the necessary next step
is for Texas to introduce the anti-drug message to kids of younger ages.

"I think of the analogy of a river. A lot of our work is in pulling people
out of the river of substance abuse, and there are more people in that
river than we can ever pull out. We do not have resources to treat
everybody," he said, noting that only about one in 10 abusers is helped.

"So what our present leadership has said is `Let's back up and go upriver
and stop some of these people from jumping in.' "

Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau