Pubdate: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 Source: New York Times Teens and Marijuana: Scaring Them Straight Has Lost Its Edge By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN The quarrel gets played out daily in thousands of families. Stay away from marijuana, the exasperated parent warns; it will mess up your future. The teenager retorts: But you tried it and it didn't hurt you. At home or school, when the conversation turns to illegal drugs the subject is usually marijuana. As many as 70 million Americans, including many of today's parents, have smoked it. And as their children can be quick to point out, the vast majority did not go on to be addicted to cocaine or heroin. So how do parents persuade a skeptical 14yearold not to try marijuana, when the teenager can see across the dinner table that their lives weren't ruined? The Clinton administration will face that challenge next month as it starts a $175million advertising campaign aimed at discouraging teens from using marijuana and other drugs. If teens scoff at the idea that marijuana is a gateway to the use of hard drugs, they may tune out other warnings of drugs' effects on their health and their critical school years. But even as advocates of legalizing marijuana are agreeing with prohibitionists that the drug shouldn't be used by teens, the gateway theory is under new attack. The prevalence of marijuana was documented again last week by a national survey reporting that teenagers were more likely to see drugs sold at their schools than in their neighborhoods and that nearly one in four said they could find someone to sell them marijuana in less than an hour. And according to a government survey of households released in August, the proportion of adolescents from age 12 to 17 who consider marijuana risky dropped to 54 percent last year, from 63 percent in 1994. In a new book, "Marijuana Myths; Marijuana Facts," Dr. John P. Morgan and Lynn Zimmer highlight what they consider fallacies of the gateway theory. Citing government statistics, they report that for every 100 people who use marijuana, 28 go on to try cocaine, 12 use cocaine a dozen times or more, but only one keeps using it weekly. "People using uncommon drugs have almost always used common drugs first," said Professor Zimmer, a sociologist at Queens College in New York City. Calling marijuana a gateway, she said, was like saying that people who ride motorcycles begin by pedaling a bicycle. "If you wanted to stop motorcycle riding," she said, "you wouldn't start by stopping people from riding bikes." Indeed, marijuana is not the only stepping stone. Most youngsters who try marijuana smoke tobacco first; many also drink beer. "The gateway drug of all the others is still alcohol," said Dr. Nicholas A. Pace, a Manhattan doctor who treats adolescents for substance abuse. But he added, "Without exception, all those people who are into heroin started with marijuana." In New York, it is almost impossible to find addicts who didn't start with marijuana. "You're always looking for a stronger drug," said Nick, a Bronx 19yearold who said he graduated to cocaine from "blunts" marijuana stuffed into hollowedout cigars. "You try to get that first high again." After examining the cases of 835 drug abusers in New York, two sociologists, Andrew Golub and Bruce D. Johnson, reported in 1995 that "use of marijuana as a teen is an important indicator of increased risk for subsequent serious drug abuse." But discouraging marijuana use, they cautioned, "will not necessarily reduce the subsequent prevalence of serious drug abuse." Dr. Robert L. DuPont, a psychiatrist who formerly headed the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said the gateway concept describes how drug use progresses rather than why it happens. In his book, "The Selfish Brain: Learning from Addiction," DuPont says that while no one is immune from addiction, discernible genetic and psychological factors mark some people as more vulnerable. These include having a parent or sibling addicted to alcohol or drugs, impulsive behavior, preoccupation with feelings of pleasure, a lack of religious or spiritual values and being between 12 and 30 years old. Since marijuana is the illegal drug most popular with teen agers, who are still in school, it makes sense to consider its effect on shortterm memory and motivation. A study of undergraduates at the University of Maryland found that those with the lowest grade averages were four times more likely to smoke pot than those with the highest.. No such gap was observed between good and poor students who drank alcohol. Experts like Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal, an addiction psychiatrist, support parents who warn their children that marijuana can harm their motivation and learning ability. Also, he said, "You don't learn to master the normal anxiety of adolescence. Adolescence is an anxious and painful time. One the things you'll learn is how to handle that awkwardness and social discomfort. You're masking that with marijuana or alcohol." Even outspoken advocates of legal marijuana flinch at sharing it with adolescents just as most smokers and drinkers do. Dennis Peron, the originator of the California ballot initiative supporting medicinal marijuana, defends all marijuana use as medical, then adds, "but not for kids." And while Morgan defends marijuana as "amazingly benign in its human use," he acknowledges that it isn't entirely safe. That is why he says, "Psychoactive drug use is an activity for adults and not children." Since the public generally opposes the legalization of marijuana for anyone, such qualms over the proper age for experimenting may be expressed more with an eye to the law or to public opinion. Yet the risk to youth is the only area in which both proponents and opponents of pot find themselves in accord. "Whether we're talking about alcohol and tobacco or marijuana and cocaine," DuPont said, "everybody agrees that kids shouldn't use."