Pubdate: Wed, 30 Oct 2002
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2002 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author:  Stephen Smith
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

COCAINE USE SOARS AMONG STATE YOUTH, SURVEY FINDS

Cocaine use tripled among Massachusetts middle school students and doubled 
among high school students in the past three years, according to a report 
issued yesterday, signaling the resurgence of a drug that counselors 
believed had been in decline for a decade.

The Department of Public Health surveyed more than 3,000 adolescents 
earlier this year and found that 5.6 percent of middle school students and 
5.8 percent of high school students had used cocaine during the preceding 
month, figures that spurred an immediate reaction from the report's authors.

''Once I got these numbers,'' said Teresa Anderson, director of statistics 
in the agency's Bureau of Substance Abuse Services, ''the first thing I did 
was walk down the hall to the office of the director of prevention and talk 
about how we can turn this around.''

Counselors and treatment specialists interviewed yesterday said cocaine has 
been reappearing at the street level as teenagers pursue a quicker - and 
often cheaper - high. In many respects, they say, the surge in cocaine use 
is a classic case of market-driven economics: As designer ''club drugs'' 
such as Ecstasy flooded the streets and commanded a growing share of the 
drug business, cocaine dealers responded by slashing the price on their 
product. The result was a buying binge by adolescents.

''It's climbing in use, all right - going off the roof, really,'' said Bill 
Phillips, program director for New Beginnings, a drug prevention initiative 
in Framingham. ''It's like guns and butter. If a drug is there for the 
right price, it's going to be taken and if it's not, they'll go to 
something else. Cocaine is just easier to get now.''

The same study reported decreases in use of alcohol and club drugs and 
found that while marijuana use has risen among middle school students since 
1999, it dropped in high school.

The survey, which included students at 50 middle schools and 50 high 
schools across the state, found that the average middle school student 
began drinking alcohol at a slightly older age than in 1999, between the 
ages of 11 and 12 rather than between 9 and 10.

Still, one in five middle school students reported that they'd had a drink 
during the month before they were surveyed, while half of the high school 
students reported that they had consumed alcohol during the same period.

In almost every major category, Massachusetts adolescents were more likely 
to engage in substance abuse than their peers nationally or elsewhere in 
the Northeast. Anderson attributed that, in part, to the state being on a 
well-identified drug trafficking route.

The most striking findings in the report involved cocaine use - findings 
that counselors believe may, paradoxically, result from more stringent 
enforcement of alcohol laws.

''It's much harder for a kid these days to walk into a liquor store and get 
booze,'' said Coco Wellington, director of dual diagnosis and addiction 
recovery services at Advocates Community Counseling in Marlborough and 
Framingham. ''But you can just walk up to any dealer on the street for 
cocaine or your buddy has it. Cocaine is simply the drug of choice right now.''

Specialists such as Wellington, as well as law enforcement authorities, 
said yesterday that drug use is often cyclical, with price and availability 
influencing which substance is in ascendance. Several counselors said that 
this year's cocaine use closely mirrors that seen in the late 1980s and 
early 1990s, during the heyday of crack.

The preferred form of cocaine - powder or crack - appears to vary among 
geographic regions in the state. In Waltham, a drug counselor said the drug 
is more commonly inhaled as a powder, whereas in Springfield it is 
generally smoked as crack. Whatever the form, counselors said, a perception 
persists among adolescents that cocaine is safer, and less addictive, than 
other drugs, especially injected drugs such as heroin.
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