Twenty‐six(26)patients, 18female and7male, aged 16 to 25 years (mean age 19.03 ±2.2 years) previously diagnosed as suffering from localized juvenile periodontitis were randomly assigned to one of the following treatment groups: 9 patients acted as controls; 8 received subgingival chlorexidine gel; and 9 had subgingival tetracycline paste application. All treatment modalities resulted in a pronounced improvement in PI, GI, and GI‐S by 12 weeks (P<0.001). The mean probing depths also decreased, but there were no significant‐differences found between the three groups. However, when the interproximal sites of the 3 groups were examined separately from the buccal and lingual sites, it was found that there was a significant (P<0.05) difference between the probing depths, with the control group showing the greatest reduction of 2.58 mm and the Chlorhexidine group showing the least reduction of 1.37 mm. It was concluded that a single application of topical subgingival tetracycline did not result in any short‐term improvement over that achieved by standard non‐surgical therapy in the clinical parameters of these localized juvenile periodontitis patients.J Periodontol 1995;66:47–51.