THE FAMILY As a child, Burt was thin, withdrawn and
bookish. His father took the family all over the world—Hawaii, Brazil,
France, Japan—as he climbed the ladder of a large chemical company.
Three years ago, when Burt was 15, the family moved to Palos Verdes, an
affluent suburb south of Los Angeles. Almost overnight the youngster
was transformed. He taught himself to surf, put on 50 Ibs. of muscle
and a deep tan, was elected to the student council and began dating the
prettiest girls. Though his grades slipped to the low B range, his
parents were delighted. Eight months ago, Burt's parents stumbled on four “bricks” of marijuana hidden in his bedroom closet. “What the
hell is this?” demanded Burt's father. “Stuff, of course,” answered
Burt, nonchalantly adding that he had been taking pot ever since he
arrived in California. Aghast, his father wangled a job transfer to Michigan and told Burt that
his next school would be an Eastern board ing school. Burt laughed in
his father's face and disappeared for three weeks. When he returned, it
was to announce his enlistment in the Marines. The fam ily now lives in
Michigan. Burt is a pfc. in Viet Nam. Attractive Models. If Burt does not quite seem like the boy next door,
look again. He is a member of a new and rapidly growing group of drug
users that the Rev. Melvin L. Knight Jr. calls “Billy-the-Kid drug
heroes.” Knight, who is pastor of St. Peter's-by-the-Sea Presbyterian
Church in Palos Verdes, observes: “These guys seem to be real straight
arrows. They're intelligent, good-looking. Good at sports, popular
around school. They have all the characteristics of the old-style
campus hero. But they also take and perhaps push drugs: marijuana,
pills of all sorts.” For these youngsters, adds Knight, marijuana is
not so much an instrument of defiance or a means of escape as it is “an
integral part of a complicated, energetic life,” which is in many ways
an all-too-attractive model for the younger kids. Though the National Institute of Mental Health's most recent
study reported that only 10% of the nation's high school students had
smoked marijuana, observers closer to the scene in many communities put
the figure far higher. According to a Los Angeles Times survey of Palos
Verdes last week, high schools there “now have a proportion of
drug-experienced students which police estimate at 50% and counselors
put at 75%. An estimated third of the total are habitual users.” Even
more astonishing, the Times found, drug use has penetrated down to the
sixth grade and does not always stop with pot: a few 13-year-olds are
shooting the far more dangerous “speed” . Often, with
eerie sophistication they insert the hypodermic into the underside of
their tongues to conceal the needle tracks.
