Funding an Epic Study of Drug Habits

[PFlynn]

Hamburg Township, Mich. - President Nixon may not have dented the nation's drug epidemic when he named Elvis Presley a "federal agent at large" in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in 1970.

But a $120 million research program born during the Nixon administration continues to shape America's drug policies.

And it all started with a 33-year-old psychology graduate student's bold plan to poll thousands of teens nationwide each year about their drug habits and beliefs at a time when reefer madness had them in its grip.

Lloyd Johnston, now 67, still runs that study from the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. His group recently was awarded a $33 million National Institute on Drug Abuse grant to continue through 2012.

"It's just unparalleled in its importance in our field," said Tom Hendrick, founding director of the Partnership for a Drug Free America - the group created the iconic TV ads showing a frying egg and a narrator who says, "This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"

The study owes its birth to Nixon drug czar Dr. Robert DuPont, who read Johnston's 1973 book "Drugs and American Youth" and invited the research assistant to Washington to brief his staff. Johnston pitched DuPont the idea he and colleague Jerald Bachman dreamed up of asking teens across the country about their drug, alcohol and tobacco habits and attitudes.

DuPont was hooked, and secured funding for the first "Monitoring the Future" study.

"I said, 'We've got to do this, and Lloyd is the guy to do it,"' said DuPont, a psychiatrist and head of the Institute for Behavior and Health in Rockville, Md.

The project was approved in August 1974 and the first surveys were conducted of 17,000 students the following spring.

Released in late 1975, the results gave the nation a first comprehensive look at what its children were smoking, popping and drinking: 40 percent of high school seniors had used marijuana in the past 12 months and 45 percent had taken an illicit drug in that time.

From the start, the annual studies drew intense media coverage, Johnston said from the airy lakeside home 15 miles north of campus that he shares with his wife and daughter.

"NBC put on a one-hour special called, 'Reading, Writing and Reefer,' " said Johnston, a Harvard MBA. It "had a few talking heads like me" and lots of "kids who were heavy dope users."

"Anybody who was viewing the program could see that they weren't functioning right cognitively," he said. "I think it was one of the most effective prevention tools."



Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2008 San Francisco Chronicle
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