Study Links Smoking to Drug Abuse
Everyone knows that smoking is an impediment to health. Now tobacco has another mark against it: A study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows smoking is a risk factor in teen-age drug abuse.
Nicotine addiction is often a gateway to experimentation with harder drugs, according to NIDA. Dr. Jack Henningfield, chief of the clinical pharmacology branch at NIDA, says 12- to 17-year-olds who smoke cigarettes are 14 times likelier to smoke marijuana and 32 times likelier to use cocaine than those who don’t smoke cigarettes.
“Nicotine addiction teaches a person to use a shortcut to deal with anxiety, weight control, stress or boredom,” Henningfield said. “For adolescents going through changes, using a drug to cope short-circuits natural development and problem-solving abilities.”
Tobacco is becoming especially dangerous because even young kids can get cigarettes. Learning to use a drug to alter one’s state of mind causes physical and emotional changes in children that lead to dependency, Henningfield said. “By the time a child is old enough to evaluate smoking, the choice has already been made.”
The mere act of inhaling smoke adds to tobacco’s chemical risks. Henningfield believes that because some drugs like crack are smoked, learning to inhale makes the “smoke route” more inviting.
Thomas Lauria, assistant to the president of the Tobacco Institute in Washington, finds Henningfield’s reasoning convoluted. According to Lauria, caffeine is worse than nicotine when it comes to mind-altering effects. He also points out that both smoking and drug use are higher in lower socioeconomic groups, so placing the blame solely on tobacco instead of social factors such as stress is unreasonable.
Brian Naranjo’s perfect score of 1,600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test was the talk of Pacifica High School last week.
But the UCLA-bound senior, who had the flu when he took the college entrance examination Dec. 1, describes his rare feat as “no big deal.”
Naranjo, 17, was one of only 10 students in the United States to earn the highest possible score on the test in 1990, said district spokesman Alan Trudell. Last year, about 1.8 million students took the test, which is the most common examination required for college admission.
Nationwide, average scores are 476 for math and 424 for verbal. California students scored an average of 484 in the math section and 419 in the verbal. Naranjo scored 800 on both.
“To people who know me real well, this has been no big deal,” Naranjo said. “But other people are treating me like some sort of test guru and it gets sort of old after a while.”
“Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves--and find nothing! Therefore, they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.”
--Helen Keller (1880-1968)
