Pubdate: 122197 Source: Orange County Register Section: news, page 15 Contact: Christopher S. Wren, New York Times DRUG USE BY YOUNG LEVELS OFF SURVEY Alcohol remains a bigger problem among teenagers than illegal narcotics,a study finds. Through older high school students are still smoking marijuana in increasing numbers,their flirtation with other illegal drugs appears to be slowing, and drug use among eighthgraders has stopped climbing for the first time in more than five years. The findings, compiled be the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and announced by President Clinton on Saturday, offered the first evidence since 1992 that adolescent drug use, which started rebounding months before Clinton moved into the White House, could be leveling off. Among the 18,600 eighthgraders interviewed for the survey, called Monitoring the Future, 29.4 percent said they had tried an illegal drug, usually marijuana, at least once, compared with 31.2 percent last year and 28.5 percent in 1995. "What's happening is that eighthgraders are beginning to get very clear messages, first from their parents, then from their teachers and from the rest of us, that these drugs are dangerous," Donna Shalala, the secretary of Health and Human Services, said Friday at an advance White House briefing. The eighthgraders in the survey also expressed somewhat more disapproval of drug users than their predecessors did last year. Such attitudes are significant as a harbinger of drug use in subsequent years. The survey confirmed that alcohol remained a bigger problem among teenagers than illegal drugs. Thirtyone percent of high school seniors, 25 percent of sophomores and 15 percent of eighthgraders admitted to binge drinking, defined as consuming five or more drinks in a row, on one occasion or more in the previous two weeks, That is well below the peak year of 1983, when the figure for seniors hit 41 percent. Clinton cited the survey in his weekly radio address Saturday, saying the increasing rates of teenage drug use were leveling of and in some cases decreasing. "Today's eighthgraders are less likely to have used drugs over the past year, and just as important, they are more likely to disapprove of drug use," the president said. "This change in attitudes represents a glimmer of hope in our efforts to protect our children from drugs. But our work is far from over." The findings will also help Clinton refute Republican criticism that he has allowed adolescent drug use to soar in his White House tenure. In its latest drugfighting measure, his administration has budgeted $195 million for an ad campaign on television and radio and in print to discourage adolescents from using illegal drugs. The national blitz will get under way next month. "Our goal," Clinton said, "is to make sure that every time a child turns on the TV, listens to the radio or surfs the Internet, he or she will get the powerful message that drugs can destroy your life." The Monitoring the Future survey annually tracks drug use by successive cohorts, or peer groups, of adolescents in the eighth, 10th and 12the grades. The principal researcher, Lloyd Johnston, said the findings were more complex this year, because not all drug use had moved in the same direction and not all grade levels showed the same shifts.