Capital Youths Venting Ire Over Mayor Barry : Drugs: The city’s young people are feeling hurt and betrayed. They see hypocrisy in a black role model they once admired.

Sixteen-year-old “Trinch,” as he is known, stood with three friends on the front steps of Cardozo High School, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his Windbreaker, the black baseball cap on his head tilted in a jaunty angle to one side. Under the cap, however, his face was cold and angry.

He cursed at the mention of District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry.

“He’s gonna tell us not to use drugs and not to sell ‘em--and he’s doing it himself ?” he said, spitting out the words. “They think they’re gonna stop the drug problem, but they can’t, they just can’t .”

On Monday, three days after FBI agents arrested him for allegedly smoking crack cocaine, Barry flew to Florida to begin treatment at the Hanley-Hazelden Center in West Palm Beach.

Barry, who said Sunday that he wanted to begin to “heal my body, mind and soul,” has not publicly acknowledged a drug abuse problem. His press secretary has said his most serious difficulty is with alcohol.

Teens Are Furious

Teen-agers all over this city are hurt and furious over what they consider a personal betrayal by a black role model they admired. Many of them have heard Barry lecture numerous times in their schools about the evils of drug use, all the time denying that he himself had ever used them. “My mind’s too sharp, my body’s too precious, to foul it with drugs,” he has told them.

Katina Morris, 16, an 11th grader, could barely hide her disgust. “He should have come out and told people that he had a problem instead of lying to everyone for so long,” she said.

“He was going around preaching ,” Tracey Parker, 17, said. “But he was doing it.”

The reaction among Washington’s young people, who identified strongly with the city’s mayor, has been intense. It is hardly surprising, considering that Washington--with its high rate of drug-related murders--has become a symbol of the nation’s drug scourge.

Even President Bush, speaking with a group of newspaper publishers Thursday, referred to young people when asked about Barry’s arrest.

“You know what, my thought went to the kids, the kids in the schools,” he said. “It’s a matter of sadness, and Barbara shares my view on that.”

Impact on Youth

Nevertheless, many drug abuse experts and inner-city youth workers predicted that Barry’s arrest last week on crack cocaine charges will not have a long-term negative impact on young people trying to break out of the cycle of poverty, violence and drugs.

In fact, many specialists said Barry’s troubles ultimately could have a positive influence, particularly on the war against drugs.

When a powerful, successful and famous individual is found to have a substance abuse problem, “people begin to look at themselves,” said Dr. Beny Prim, associate administrator of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration.

“If he goes into treatment, then they begin to seek treatment, too,” said Prim, who also runs the Addiction Research and Treatment Corp., a drug treatment program in New York. “And, when the treatment works, and he comes back to talk, he will be even more effective.”

Experts who work in inner-city social programs said that studies of black adolescents have shown that they look to the people closest to them as role models--parents, friends, clergy, Big Brothers, even their local drug pushers--rather than to famous black people.

“Those people are much more powerful role models than other figures,” said Dr. Jessica Daniel, a Boston psychologist who works with the Judge Baker Center, a private child guidance clinic associated with Harvard University. “Those are the individuals from whom they derive a sense of what it means to be an African American.”

For that reason, Barry’s predicament is unlikely to inflict a sense of despair among young people outside the nation’s capital. And even among Washington’s teen-agers, many experts predicted that the anger initially expressed toward Barry would fade and eventually turn into sympathy.

“I think the role model thing is terribly misunderstood and overblown in America,” said Primus Mootry, executive director of the Better Boys Foundation, a private community social agency that works with disadvantaged children in an inner-city Chicago neighborhood.

“Kids in poor communities get involved in drugs because their peers are doing drugs, because the pusher is in the neighborhood,” Mootry said. “The pusher is a far more significant role model. These kids aren’t going to suddenly lose hope because of something Marion Barry did.

“For an athlete to come to an inner-city school and make a talk and drive off--that’s wonderful,” he added. “But let’s not confuse that with the fact that these kids are living day to day with difficult circumstances. One of the ways in which we trivialize the plight of children in our inner cities is by saying cutesy little things like they need role models. They need a better family environment, food, clothing, shelter and a decent education.”

Behavior Called Denial

For many teen-agers, the most difficult aspect of the Barry affair is his apparent hypocrisy--publicly taking an anti-drug stance while allegedly using drugs himself. But addiction specialists pointed out that Barry was probably engaging in denial, which is considered classic behavior for someone with a substance abuse problem.

“I don’t think the mayor saw himself as a hypocrite in what he was doing,” Prim said. “Possibly, it was denial, which is part of the disease. It’s not unusual. Doctors go out and talk about smoking, but still smoke.”

Dr. Robert Dupont, a psychiatrist and former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said that most teen-agers are at one time or another disappointed by someone they respect.

“They have the parent who says ‘do as I say, not as I do,’ but wisdom and love have to go beyond thinking that the people you care about have all the answers and do everything right,” he said. “They can identify with the mayor better now because he is so visibly imperfect. I’m not sure that that’s going to be bad. Even inner-city kids can forgive.”

Many experts said that each time a celebrity is revealed to have a substance abuse problem, the public receives a strong anti-drug message. Among others, they cited former Washington Redskins defensive end Dexter Manley, who was suspended from the team after failing a drug test, and the cocaine-related death of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias, who died in June, 1986, after the Boston Celtics drafted him.