By
The Associated Press
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - American teen-agers are using more drugs, but less tobacco and alcohol than teens in Europe, according to a study released during a World Health Organization conference that ended yesterday.
The study was based on classroom surveys of teen-agers in the United States and Europe, from the United Kingdom to the Ukraine. It was released Tuesday at a WHO conference focused on young people and alcohol use.
The study found that 41 percent of U.S. teens questioned said they had tried marijuana or hashish, compared with 16 percent of European youth.
Americans were also more inclined to use harder drugs - with 16 percent saying they had used amphetamines and 10 percent saying they had used LSD. In contrast, only 6 percent of the Europeans said they had tried another illicit drug.
It's a different story, however, in the case of tobacco and alcohol, with Americans less inclined to use those substances than their European counterparts.
The study found that 26 percent of U.S. youth had smoked in a month's period in 1999, compared with 37 percent in Europe. Sixteen percent of American teens had used alcohol at least 40 times, while the European figure was only 24 percent.
The study was primarily focused on Europe, with anonymous responses from nearly 100,000 students - aged 15 and 16 - in 30 countries. But it included more limited data from a separate 1999 study of some 14,000 American 10th-graders.
The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs was a collaborative effort among the participating nations coordinated by the non-governmental Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs.
The U.S. data was extracted from a national survey project called "Monitoring the Future," conducted at the Institute for Social Research of the University of Michigan. It's funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Delegates at the three-day conference, organized under the auspices of the WHO and Sweden in its role as EU president, were seeking ways to fight alcohol abuse among young people in Europe.
"It is known that both regular heavy drinking and binge drinking have serious effect(s) on young people's physical and mental health," European Union Commissioner David Byrne said. "Alcohol drinking by youngsters is associated with a wide range of social problems, such as anti-social behavior, violence and drunk driving."
Representatives from 51 mostly European countries endorsed a final declaration setting various goals. They include delaying the age youths start drinking, providing alternatives to alcohol and drug use, and minimizing the pressures to drink with advertising restrictions and other measures by 2006.
The European School Survey Project compared its 1999 findings to a similar study that was conducted in 1995, when data was collected in 26 countries.
Results showed an increase in binge drinking - having five or more drinks in a row - in almost half of the participating countries and an increase in the use of illicit drugs in almost all of them.
Researchers said a notable decrease was recorded in the United Kingdom and Ireland, while there was a large increase in central and eastern Europe.
