-Caveat Lector- http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/303/nation/Cocaine_use_soars_among_state_youth_su rvey_finds+.shtml
THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING Cocaine use soars among state youth, survey finds By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff, 10/30/2002 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. Stephen Smith can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 10/30/2002. � Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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