In its stereotype of the desolate inner city, the public has overlooked one stunning fact: black teenagers, who have seen the horrors of addiction firsthand, are using drugs less now than they did two decades ago (when the major surveys began). What’s more, proportionately fewer black teenagers use drugs than do whites or Hispanics. They’re at least 20 percent less likely to use cocaine or marijuana than whites, and for some groups 80 percent less likely. Last week the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey released 1993 figures showing that marijuana. LSD and amphetamine use is creeping up again among high-school students (chart) after a long decline. That’s reason for concern. But it shouldn’t obscure the good news: although hundreds of thousands of people are still using crack, relatively few of them are voting people. “I don’t know hardly anybody my age who does crack,” says Twanda Sadler, 17, of north Philadelphia. “You just don’t see it.”
One thing above all has persuaded these kids not to get involved in crack: bitter experience. Crack use leaped upward in the mid-1980s, and many of its early converts have teenage children now. The have the wisdom of firsthand observation. “I see this stuff all the time,” says Herbie. 17, whose father was addicted and whose west Philadelphia neighborhood is loaded with crack houses and crackheads. “That’s exactly why I would never do it.” Ama Jones, a 13-year-old in north Philly, says crack addicts “look terrible. I don’t want to look like that.” Larry, 15, admits to smoking some marijuana, but he would never try crack: “Your face gets all sucked in and you look like a zombie.”
Some kids even help get their own parents off drugs. Christina, 16. told her crack-addict mother, “If you want me back, you’ve got to clean yourself up.” Her mother is in a treatment program now, and Christina is living with her grandmother. Ed Cox Jr., a drug-prevention counselor in the Ferguson Elementary School in north Philly, says some of his kids go home and say to their parents, “Mr. Cox says you shouldn’t be doing that.” Not all parents take kindly to the message, of course, and Cox has to be politic. “I tell the kids, ‘Just because someone in your family does it doesn’t make it all right’.”
In Philadelphia’s tough black neighborhoods, the anti-drug message starts in kindergarten. When Cox asks a class of 21 first graders, “How many people here have seen a cap?” even, hand in the room goes up: streets around the school are littered with these empty crack vials. “Do we pick these up?” asks Cox. The class shouts back in unison, their voices shrill with childish disdain, “No!” Cox advises visitors, when leaving the school. to avoid one side street where the dealers hang out. Is that the kind of thing he tells his kids? “No, that’s the kind of thing they tell me.”
The propaganda is everywhere. Neighborhood community centers are “drug-free zones”-and kids generally don’t bring drugs onto the premises. Black ministers preach against drugs (though many complain that the powerful black church is “behind the curve” on the drug issue, since few congregations sponsor their own drug-prevention programs). TV commercials urge kids, “Don’t do drugs. Don’t die and go away.” Some kids dismiss the ads as “corny,” but studies show that nearly three quarters of black eighth and 10th graders nationwide have seen them. “That’s incredibly high recall,” says Ginna Marston of the Partnership for a DrugFree America, which produces the ads. “It’s in the same category as major advertisers like McDonald’s or Nike.”
Still, by high school the bathrooms are beginning to stink of marijuana smoke. Listening to counselor Sheila Rubin lead a role-playing session at Overbrook High in west Philly you hear the usual litany of inner-city woes: broken homes, addicted parents, empty lives. One boy acts out his father: “What’s wrong with you, boy don’t you know how to say hello?” A girl plays her mother: “Why are you always standing there looking so dumb?” Rubin asks the kids what they can do about all the anger in their homes. “Pray,” says one. “Write poetry,” says another. One girl says her family was evicted from their house because her mother spent the rent money on drugs. “The main thing you can do is talk about it,” she says. But Rubin knows she’s missing a lot of the kids who need her most: “The kids who do drugs don’t come to school, because they can’t function.” Overbrook High School has 3.000 kids. A dozen or so visit Rubin.
Ghetto kids know their neighborhoods intimately-partly because they have so few opportunities to leave them. They know who’s buying and who’s selling, and on which street corners. They see younger kids selling to older users. They know the dealers are not always using drugs themselves (they need to keep their heads clear for business). But children frequently over report the amount of drug use in their own neighborhoods and schools, probably because they feel so overwhelmed by it. Even if statistics show that crack use is not spreading to younger kids, the neighborhood is still full of the drug, and more violent than ever. “In the past few years, some people I know have gotten killed,” says Jason Turner, 21, of north Philadelphia. “So it’s hard to say things have gotten better.”
Moniya Chambers, a middle schooler in north Philly, asked why she doesn’t use drugs when so many people around her do, readily answers, “I think I’m too important.” Someone has clearly taught her that answer. Unfortunately, as ,;he and her peers get older, other influences may be more powerful. Many kids report that it’s possible to refuse drugs and still be considered “cool” in school. Still, drug dealers have more money than anyone else in sight. With the black family disintegrating, and with older drug users depending on younger suppliers, teen-age dealers wield often unchecked authority in the neighborhood. Standing up to them takes more than an earnest desire to say “no” to drugs. But some kids have the mettle. “The whole point is that you don’t want to get into those things that hold you back,” says Theresa, whose alcoholic mother tried to rip up her college applications because she didn’t want to “be lonely.” Theresa went ahead and applied; she’s going to college in the fall.
Blacks report the lowest drug use among teenagers. The news about teens in general, though, is not good. After more than a decade of decline, the popularity of drugs-particularly marijuana-is on the rise.
Teenage Annual Drug Use IN PERCENT Alcohol 1992 1993 change 8th grade 53.7 51.6 -2.1 10th grade 70.2 69.3 -0.9 12th grade 76.8 76.0 -0.8 LSD 8th grade 2.1 2.3 +0.2 10th grade 4.0 4.2 +0.2 12th grade 5.6 6.8 +1.2 Marijuana/Hashish 8th grade 7.2 9.2 +2.0 10th grade 15.2 19.2 +4.0 12th grade 21.9 26.0 +4.1 “Uppers” 8th grade 6.5 7.2 +0.7 10th grade 8.2 9.6 +1.4 12th grade 7.1 8.4 +1.3
