Alcohol Still No. 1 Drug

Alcohol--in the form of beer, wine coolers and rum mixed with Diet Coke--is the drug of choice among San Fernando Valley area teen-agers.

Alcohol has the widest acceptance and is abused by more teen-agers than any other drug, according to local law enforcement authorities.

“Encino and Tarzana girls especially are fond of rum and Diet Coke because they worry about the calories” in non-diet soft drinks, an Alcoholics Anonymous counselor said.

If liquor is not handy, what drug a Valley teen-ager chooses depends on economics and ethnicity, authorities said.

The differences do not extend to drug sales at school, however, said Lt. Ron Hall, supervisor of the Los Angeles Police Department’s juvenile narcotics division. Hall’s division sends youthful-looking narcotics agents into the high schools to pose as students.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s Cleveland High in Reseda or Crenshaw High in Los Angeles, the same kinds of drugs can be found on any campus,” Hall said, referring to liquor, marijuana, cocaine in rock or powder form, PCP and LSD.

On Valley high school campuses, all the youths arrested last spring on suspicion of selling rock cocaine had been bused in from other parts of the city. “None of them were from the neighborhood,” he said.

Hall said, “Off-campus is where the differences occur.”

In upper-middle-class, predominantly white Valley neighborhoods, where many teen-agers have cars and large allowances, users buy larger quantities of drugs than their less affluent peers and are more likely to experiment with a variety of drugs.

“There’s more awareness of drugs, and they tend to experiment more with marijuana, coke--mostly in powder form--LSD, barbiturates and a little PCP,” Hall said.

Drug buys in Encino, Northridge and Chatsworth most often occur behind closed doors in the homes and backyards of otherwise quiet neighborhoods. “There aren’t a lot of street dealers in the Valley,” Hall said. “It’s all done in homes.”

Use of ‘Crack’

In poor and working-class black neighborhoods, Hall said, rock cocaine--called “crack” by East Coast drug dealers--is the most popular drug among teen-agers, after liquor. There is some demand for PCP but very little for “exotic drugs such as LSD and hallucinogenics,” he said.

He said the demand for marijuana in black neighborhoods has dwindled.

“The ghetto marijuana dealer is almost a thing of the past,” Hall said. “If someone in South Los Angeles wants to buy grass, the dealers refer them to Hollywood or the Valley.”

On the other hand, Hall said, next to alcohol, marijuana is teen-agers’ drug of choice in poor and working-class Latino neighborhoods. PCP is popular in the barrio, as is sniffing fumes of glue and paint, he said.

Preferences Vary

Liquor is still No. 1 in communities near the Valley. After that, preferences vary.

In Burbank, Sgt. Don Goldberg said, teen-agers choose powdered cocaine and marijuana.

In the Santa Clarita Valley, hash--the potent resin of the marijuana plant--is next to alcohol in popularity, according to Sgt. Bob Wachsmuth, who is in charge of the narcotics unit at the Santa Clarita sheriff’s station. Other preferred drugs there, he said, are powdered cocaine and amphetamines.

In Simi Valley, Police Sgt. Fred James said, 99% of the drug arrests among teen-agers involve marijuana or powdered cocaine. However, Simi Valley youths, he said, will choose alcohol over marijuana.

West of the San Fernando Valley--around Calabasas, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village and Thousand Oaks--next to liquor, marijuana and powdered cocaine are the drugs most favored by teen-agers, and, in recent years, LSD has been making a comeback, according to Sgt. Lance Galletch, head of the narcotics unit at the Malibu sheriff’s station.

“LSD use skipped a generation,” Galletch said, “but now we’ve got kids who don’t know what LSD can do to you, and they’re starting to experiment with it again.”