Drug Problem In U.S. Schools

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31936, 13 March 1969, Page 13

Drug Problem In U.S. Schools

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, March 12.

The use of narcotics and dangerous drugs by American teen-agers is a growing national problem, not only in large cities but also in rural states like Idaho and lowa, according to a Federal official.

The associate director of | the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (Mr John Finlator) (old a group of teachers that the use of drugs was filtering down into junior high schools as well as in high schools throughout the nation. “A socio-economic pattern has been found,” he said. “Slum-dwellers seem to turn more to narcotics—the ‘hard,’ addictive drugs such as heroin—while the so-called dangerous drugs, such as marijuana, L.S.D., amphetamines and barbiturates, predominate lin the more affluent neighibourhoods and suburbs.

I “Two years ago the biggest Iproblem was in the northeast and on the west coast, but (today we’re finding it all over (the country. “Two years ago. for example, Denver didn't have (quite as serious a problem las it does today. Now it’s a

(roosting place for hippies. The drugs follow them there.” Mr Finlator said the emergence of hallucinogenic drugs like L.S.D. began in California, and the bureau had since found most of the clandestine laboratories producing such drugs in that area. “Hard drugs” presented the most serious problem in New York City, where more than half the nation’s adult addicts were found; whereas marijuana was in use throughout the nation.

Mr Finlator was speaking at the opening of a two-day conference of Washington I school principals, with whom he discussed the dangers of drugs and narcotics. 1 Dr Eugene Smoley, the principal of a Bethesda, Maryland, high school, estiI mated that 16 to 15 per cent (of his students had at least i “experimented” with danger‘ous drugs.