Bad Habits : Marijuana is back as the drug of choice for some kids, who think it’s safe. But experts warn it’s more potent than ever.

Every Monday morning at Santa Monica High School, 15-year-old Becky chats up her friends about the weekend. Repeatedly, the conversation turns to the same topic: smoking-out at a razeparty, getting lifted on blunts and chronic.

Translation: getting high on marijuana at a friend’s house.

“Marijuana is the drug to do. It’s cheap. It’s easy to get. It’s everywhere,” says the freshman, whose name has been changed along with those of other teen-agers in this story. “People smoke-out in the restrooms, during lunch. They ditch to smoke.”

Across Los Angeles, some students are taking a fast, drug-laden trip fueled by an attitude that it’s cool to smoke marijuana, not viewing the drug as addictive, harmful or a great risk, even though researchers warn that it is 20 times more potent today than in the 1960s and ‘70s.

This attitude is in line with the findings of a University of Michigan study announced earlier this month that illicit drug use--with marijuana heading the list--among American teen-agers has increased in the last two years, reversing a trend of generally declining use that began in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Teen-agers who use pot say they are merely experimenting or smoking to fit in or to cope with the stress of problems at home and school. Most say they smoke marijuana--which currently also goes by names like “bud,” “endo,” “lovelies,” “primos” and “frios”--when they’re bored at school and simply because it’s fun to do at parties.

At HPs (home parties) and DPs (ditching parties), teen-agers mix marijuana--ranging in price from $5 for a joint to $40 and more for a half-filled sandwich bag of the stuff--with crushed rock cocaine for a stronger high. They dip joints in solvents and insecticides and lace them with PCP, a powerful psychedelic drug that can cause mental or emotional disorders or death. Also popular are $5 LSD tabs--paper the size of a contact lens that has been blotted with a drop of the hallucinogen, which students suck on or place under an eyelid for a faster rush.

Felipe, a 10th-grader at a Los Angeles high school, says he has smoked marijuana daily for the past two years. “I am probably addicted to marijuana. I got plants at my home. I’ve gone to school crazy high. I get high ‘cause my friends do it. It’s fun, I guess.”

The survey of 50,000 junior and high school students, conducted for the 19th consecutive year for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, found that marijuana and LSD, along with inhalants and stimulants, were being used by more teen-agers.

The study, widely regarded as one of the government’s chief benchmarks for measuring progress in the drug war, found that cocaine use held steady at low levels, alcohol use generally declined, but cigarette use was on the rise.

According to the survey, the percentage of high school seniors who reported using an illicit drug at least once in their lives increased from 40.7% in 1992 to 42.9% in 1993, but still remained below the peak of 65.6% reported in a comparable study in 1981.

The survey also found that the proportion of eighth-graders using marijuana increased three percentage points in the last two years, to 9.2%. Among 10th-graders, the share using marijuana went from 15.2% in 1992 to 19.2% in 1993. The percentage of 12th-graders smoking the drug increased from 21.9% to 26% between 1992 and 1993, researchers reported.

Researchers, parents, educators, law enforcement officials and drug treatment experts agree that the findings are troublesome. Most officials attribute the results to a growing complacency about the problems of drug abuse, peer pressure, a lack of attention to the issue by both government and the media, and too much freedom allowed by parents, especially those who came of age during an era when drug use was widely glamorized.

Ruth Rich, director of substance abuse programs for the Los Angeles Unified School District, confirmed that more students are seeking and being referred to support groups for the use of marijuana and LSD. “The reason is they’re getting a lot of propaganda that using drugs is OK,” she says, citing U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders and other public officials who have advocated legalization, or the study of it.

The increase is slight, however, and Los Angeles school district rates, which tend to mirror those nationally, have not returned to their 1978 peak, when 65% of high school students said they had tried an illegal substance at least once.

Michael Moran, a sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department’s DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program, says some of the biggest obstacles officers face are peer pressure and parental denial that “their little darling could be doing something wrong.”

Moreover, he says, “We used to tell children, ‘If you use drugs, bad things will happen to you.’ It’s not true. A lot of casual users go on for years and function in what we think is a normal life. Until they are no longer here, we are going to have a large number of people buying drugs and they will have a major impact on our youth.”

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Despite official concern, the kids who are using pot say it is a pervasive and harmless pastime.

“Marijuana is not like crack. That messes you up bad,” says Lorenzo, who has smoked marijuana for two years.

Lorenzo, a Los Angeles high school student, says he has managed to keep his secret from his parents. Ironically, his father is an alcohol and drug abuse counselor.

“If my dad knew, he’d probably throw me in rehab,” he says. “My parents never told me about drugs, so I had to experiment with them myself. But when you experiment too much, you like it and then you get hooked.”

He says he gets high because it’s the social thing to do. Marijuana, he says, expands his imagination, relaxes him and helps him cope with problems at home. He realizes that smoking pot has had an adverse effect on him; his grade-point average has gone from a high C to a low D and he no longer plays interscholastic sports because he has become lethargic. Now he ditches classes to smoke and is out every weeknight, sometimes just kicking back with his friends or out clubbing. That usually includes getting high because “I can’t have fun without bud (marijuana).”

Julia, a 17-year-old senior at Ramona Opportunity School, says that since age 12, she has experimented with “everything except for heroin.” At 14, she was to selling rock cocaine to her friends.

“Lately, I’ve been smoking primos--weed mixed with rock cocaine,” she says, sitting at a picnic table. “I want some type of enjoyment. I kick it with my friends” at house parties, where she can select from a wide choice of drugs to use and buy. “We just walk into the house and ask them for a dime ($10) bag.” If she buys from a friend, a dime bag usually goes for $2 or $3.

“Everybody is so used to marijuana in their system that they don’t even get buzzed off of it no more. They just don’t think it’s dangerous,” she says, adding that her friends are mixing marijuana with other drugs to sustain their highs.

“Yesterday, a girl was smoked out on a frio (marijuana laced with PCP). Her eyes were drooping. The teachers sense it. They don’t even say nothing. What can they do? Right now my friends are into smoking dust, marijuana with chemicals in it. It’s a weird drug. One time my friend smoked it and he started to pretend he was a bird.”

Julia says adults have told her and her friends that drugs are bad, but the attitude among her classmates is that “nobody cares to hear ‘Just Say No.’ Drugs are just part of society.”

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Although the findings from the University of Michigan’s study are disturbing, researchers point out that the numbers still are below the levels of the 1970s. They also report that the 42% of high school seniors who said they had used an illicit drug at least once in their lives is still a minority. And many kids say they have been influenced by warnings from parents and experts and have chosen to stay away from drugs.

Andrew, 16, a 10th-grader at George Washington Preparatory High School, tried marijuana once, didn’t like it and vows never to do it again.

“I wanted to get high cause I had problems at home. Bud doesn’t make you do bad things, it makes you lazy and later you fall asleep. I don’t think it’s a major big drug like crack, but I also know that it’s bad. It’s illegal.”

Others, like Maggie, 15, learned the hard way. Four months ago, she thought she was going to die after she smoked $200 worth of primos and took three LSD tabs in the span of two hours.

Maggie, who began taking drugs when she was 12 because “I just wanted to see how it felt to get high,” entered a hospital drug-rehab program after the incident and has remained drug-free.

“You do drugs because you want to, not because anybody makes you,” Maggie says.

“Everybody thinks that marijuana is not a bad drug. But I tripped out on it, almost died. You hear from kids that ‘it will never happen to me.’ I used to think like that. My friends say that I’m going to go back to drugs. I’m not going to sit here and say that I’m going to stay drug-free the rest of my life because I don’t know the future. But I do want to change.”

Dennis, 15, a 10th-grader at John Marshall High School, says he knows marijuana is “dangerous stuff” because his parents have told him so. He says his friends who smoke pot and take other illicit drugs know that “it’s bad for them, but they don’t care about the consequences until it’s too late. They don’t listen to anybody. I’m tired that everyone is doing it.”

So is Melissa, 17, a senior at Garfield High School, who says that kids smoke in the restrooms and at a nearby fast-food restaurant during lunchtime, and that they ditch class to get high.

“I have never experimented with drugs,” she says. “My friends who do drugs don’t act the same way. They were nicer before drugs. You could have a normal conversation with them, and now the only thing they talk about is acid and marijuana. Even the people you’d never imagine doing it are doing it--student leaders, students involved in school activities and sports. A lot of them do it because they are too stressed out.”

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For some “good” kids, the temptation is hard to resist.

Jesse, a 17-year-old college-bound senior, athlete and straight-A student at an Eastside high school, says he drinks beer and smokes weed just about every weekend because it’s the social thing and “it makes you less shy. It’s a way to unwind.

“When the weekend comes, I don’t want to think about my homework. I don’t want to think about football practice. I wanna party.”

And partying almost always includes excessive beer guzzling and drinking a mixture of punch with whiskey and vodka--and smoking bud.

“My parents are smart and everything,” he says, “but they think that we are just going to a party to talk. If there’s a party and there’s no weed and no beer, no one goes.

“A lot of people think that it’s just low-life and troubled kids who drink and do weed. But it is not,” Jesse says. “Us, the ones who are college bound, we know that we’re not going to be smoking pot all our lives and drinking. It’s a sign of the times. Everyone is doing it. It’s fun. It’s the ‘90s.”