HW/OFF: "musicians made drug use look tempting?" ^_~ =koff=

[Chris Warburton]

I've been way for 24 hours, so excuse me if I inadvertently double trackon
some of this stuff,

At 12:34 22.11.1999 EST, you wrote:
>Study Finds Teens Drug Use Leveling Off
>--snip--<
>
>The 12th annual survey, released today, shows that 40 percent of teens
>questioned felt ``really cool'' kids did not use drugs. By comparison, 35
>percent of those surveyed in 1998 agreed with that statement, indicating more
>kids are turned off by drugs now than before.

OK, so which teens were questioned, what were the demographics??  Which
40%, without this sort of information, the figures don't tell the story,
and how did the demographics compare with previous ones?  What does "really
cool" mean in American high school terms anyway?

>Among 13- to 15-year-olds, 8 percent believed marijuana smokers were popular,
>down from 13 percent last year and 17 percent in 1997, the survey found.

Likewise this "popular" thing...is it some urge to be subsumed into the
unthinking masses?

>The survey found other evidence that the role of drugs in teen culture was
>dissipating:
>--snip--<
>The number of teens agreeing with the statement ``it seems like marijuana is
>everywhere these days'' dropped to 48 percent this year, down from 52 percent
>last year and 59 percent in 1997.

Agreeing/disagreeing with statements like this in surveys has always struck
me as a highly dubious way of getting meaningful information - way too open
to spin

>``The tide appears to be turning,'' said Partnership chairman James E. Burke.
>``Across the board ... teen-agers are disassociating drugs from critically
>important badges of teen identity.''

Puh-leeeze!
=====================================
This is the same sort of brain-dead crap that we're being fed in this
country at the moment, if any of the UK contingent saw "Panorama" t'other
week they'll have seen how out of touch our so-called "drugs czar" is even
with our famously liberal (*g*) serving police officers.

More to come,
ChrisW

"a cynic is a man who when he smells flowers looks around for a coffin" -
Bierce