Pubdate: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 Source: Illawarra Mercury (Australia) Copyright: 1999 Illawarra Newspapers Contact: http://mercury.illnews.com.au/ MORE GIRLS INTO DRUGS Girls are catching up to boys in experimenting with drugs, a survey shows. Analysis of drug use by a sample of teenagers in the Federal Government's National Drug Strategy household survey found that double the number of females aged 14 to 19 years have tried cocaine and heroin compared to males. National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre researcher Louisa Degenhardt cautioned that the actual number of girls experimenting was quite small: only eight out of more than 800 had tried cocaine, and nine had tried heroin in the last year. However, it was the first time that girls had exceeded boys in surveys of drug experimentation. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake