Effect of Drug Use Varies, Study Finds

Heavy drug use as a teen-ager severely disrupts a person’s emotional and social growth during the transition to adulthood but occasional drug use may have no impact at all, according to one of the most extensive studies of its kind.

The eight-year study, to be published today by two UCLA psychologists, found that daily use of hard drugs such as cocaine unnaturally accelerated the transition to adult activities and increased unhappiness in relationships, job instability, crime and self-destructive thoughts.

But infrequent use of drugs, especially marijuana and hashish, appeared not to affect such things as relationships, educational achievement and mental health. And moderate alcohol use, without other drugs, actually appeared to reduce loneliness and improve one’s sense of social support, according to the report.

The federally funded study challenges the current emphasis in drug prevention on thwarting peer pressure and averting experimentation. Emphasis would be better placed on “reducing the abuse, regular use and misuse of drugs among teen-agers,” the authors argue.

‘Incomplete Approach’

“Focusing simply on handling peer pressure, such as the ‘just say no’ approaches, may placate concerned but naive parents, teachers and funding sources,” the study states, “but is an incomplete approach to confronting the task of preventing drug abuse.”

Some drug experts voiced reservations Wednesday about that assertion.

“Frankly, it seems to me that one of the best ways to prevent people from becoming heavy users is to reduce the number of people who are users at all,” said Lloyd Johnston, who heads an annual survey of drug use among high school seniors sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“I think I can see a kernel of truth in the point they’re making, too--that we should focus more on people at highest risk of becoming serious users, if we could find ways of identifying them before they’re casualties,” Johnston added. “That’s not always that easy.”

Published as Book

The study, several hundred pages, is being published as a book rather than in a professional journal. Michael Newcomb, a co-author, attributed that decision to the study’s length: To publish in a journal would have required breaking it into many installments.

Some experts in the field, who had not seen the study, noted that it is very difficult to prove “causation”--that is, to prove definitively that drug use is a cause of social and psychological difficulties, not simply an indicator of more fundamental problems.

But Howard B. Kaplan, a sociologist at Texas A&M; University who has read the book, said the authors have been leaders in developing analytical techniques “which permit you to tease out the unique effects of drugs as opposed to the effects of . . . other forms of deviant behavior.”

Newcomb, an adjunct associate professor at UCLA and an associate professor at USC, and Peter Bentler, a professor at UCLA, began their study in 1976 with 1,634 junior high school students from throughout Los Angeles County. They tracked them through 1980 then resumed in 1984, ultimately collecting complete data on 739 people.

Using annual questionnaires, they tried to trace the influence of the use of drugs ranging from cigarettes to hard drugs. They compared the effects of different degrees of teen-age drug use on education, family formation, job stability, criminal involvement and mental health in young adulthood.

Authors’ Findings

Less than 10% of the people studied were regular or chronic users, according to Newcomb. And less than 10% reported no drug use at all, including alcohol and cigarettes. Newcomb observed in an interview that those who used drugs as teen-agers tended to continue using as time passed.

Among the authors’ findings:

- Daily use of drugs had an impact on virtually every aspect of personal and social adjustment: It accelerated development, disrupted relationships, reduced educational potential, increased nonviolent crime and encouraged disorganized thinking.

- The effects differed from drug to drug. For example, cocaine increased confrontational acts and reduced happiness in close relationships. The combination of cigarettes and hard drugs was the most damaging to psychological and physical health.

- The most disturbing finding, Newcomb said, was that use of hard drugs such as hypnotics, stimulants, inhalants and narcotics generated thoughts of suicide and self-destruction while simultaneously reducing social support and increasing loneliness.

- Infrequent drug use--once a month or less--had little or no effect, Newcomb said. And he said teen-agers who used moderate amounts of alcohol, but no other drugs, “showed increased social integration and increased self-esteem.”

Asked about that finding, Newcomb noted that those people used no drugs other than alcohol and may have been better adjusted to begin with. Stressing that he was not encouraging alcohol use, Newcomb said alcohol “may be socially facilitative. We use it in cocktail parties all the time.”

“The typical youngster who has a beer or some marijuana at a party is not the one who is going to develop long-term damage as a result of their drug use,” Newcomb and Bentler wrote. “It is those teen-agers who develop a life style of drug use to relieve emotional distress and other life stressors . . . that will suffer long-term, negative consequences of their use.”