Schools Without Drugs

CHILDREN AND DRUGS

Adult's share this concern, ranking student drug use as the most serious problem facing our nation's schools for the third consecutive year. --20th Annual Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward Public Schools, 1988

Children and Drugs

School administrators and teachers often are unaware that some of their students are using and selling drugs on school property. As Ralph Egers, former superintendent of schools in South Portland, Maine, put it, "We'd like to think that our kids don't have this problem, but the brightest kid from the best family in the community could have the problem."

The facts are:

• Drug use is not confined to young people in certain geographic areas or from particular economic backgrounds; drug use affects young people throughout the nation.
• Drugs are a serious problem not only among high school students but among middle and elementary school students as well.
• Heavy drinking, defined as five or more drinks on one occasion, is reported by 30 percent of high school seniors, and more than one-half are occasional users of alcohol.
• All illegal drugs are dangerous; there is no such thing as safe or responsible use of illegal drugs.
• Although drug trafficking is controlled by adults, the immediate source of drugs for most students is other students.

Extent of Alcohol and Other Drug Use

The drug problem affects all types of students. All regions and all types of communities show high levels of drug use. Thirty percent of 1990 high school seniors in nonmetropolitan areas reported illicit drug use in the previous year, while the rate for seniors in large metropolitan areas was 33 percent. Although higher proportions of males are involved in illicit drug use, especially heavy drug use, the gap between the sexes is closing. The extent to which high school seniors reported having used illicit drugs is higher for whites than for blacks.

Initial use of alcohol and other drugs occurs at an increasingly early age. Nineteen percent of seniors report they had initiated cigarette use by sixth grade and 11 percent had used alcohol. Forty-four percent of 8th graders have tried cigarettes, and 70 percent have at least tried alcohol. Twenty-seven percent of 8th graders have gotten drunk at least once, and 13 percent report they have consumed five or more drinks in a row. Of the illicit drugs, marijuana and inhalants show the earliest pattern of initiation; about 2.8 percent of seniors had begun using both of these substances by the 6th grade. The peak initiation rate is reached by 9th grade. Peak initiation rates for cocaine and hallucinogens are reached in 10th and 11th grade with the initiation rate for nearly all drugs falling off by 12th grade.

Fact Sheet

Drugs and Dependence

• Regular users of drugs develop tolerance, a need to take larger doses to get the same initial effect. They may respond by combining drugs, frequently with devastating results. Many teenage drug users calling a national cocaine hotline report that they take other drugs just to counteract the unpleasant effects of cocaine.
• Certain drugs, such as opiates, barbituates, alcohol, and nicotine, create physical dependence. With prolonged use, these drugs become part of the body chemistry. When a regular user stops taking the drug, the body experiences the physiological trauma known as withdrawal.
• Psychological dependence occurs when taking drugs becomes the center of the user's life. Among children, psychological dependence erodes school performance and can destroy ties to family and friends, as well as cause the child to abandon outside interests, values, and goals. The child goes from taking drugs to feel good, to taking them to keep from feeling bad. Over time, drug use itself heightens the bad feelings and can leave the user suicidal. More than half of all adolescent suicides are drug-related.
• Drugs can remain in the body long after use has stopped. The extent to which a drug is retained in the body depends on the drug's chemical composition, that is, whether it is fat-soluble. Fat-soluble drugs such as marijuana and phencyclidine (PCP) seek out and settle in the fatty tissues. As a result, they build up in the fatty parts of the body such as the brain. Such accumulations of drugs and their slow release over time may have effects on the mind and body weeks or even months after drug use has stopped.

How Drug Use Develops

The first temptations to use drugs may come in social situations in the form of pressures to "act grown up" by smoking cigarettes or using alcohol or marijuana.

A 1987 Weekly Reader survey found that television and movies had the greatest influence on fourth through sixth graders in making drugs and alcohol seem attractive; the second greatest influence was other children.

The survey offers insights into why students take drugs. Children in grades four through six think that the most important reason for using alcohol and marijuana is to "fit in with others," followed closely by a desire "to feel older." Students also have incomplete or inaccurate information. For example, only 44 percent of sixth graders polled in a national survey think alcohol should be called a drug. This finding reinforces the need for prevention programs beginning in the early grades--programs that focus on teaching children the facts about drugs and alcohol and the skills to resist peer pressure to use them.

Students who turn to more potent drugs usually do so after first using cigarettes and alcohol, and then marijuana. Initial attempts may not produce a "high"; however, students who continue to use drugs learn that drugs can change their thoughts and feelings. The greater a student's involvement with marijuana, the more likely it is the student will begin to use other drugs in conjunction with marijuana.

Drug use frequently progresses in stages--from occasional use, to regular use, to multiple drug use, and ultimately to total dependency. With each successive stage, drug use intensifies, becomes more varied, and results in increasingly debilitating effects.

But this progression is not inevitable. Drug use can be stopped at any stage. However, the more deeply involved children are with drugs, the more difficult it is for them to stop. The best way to fight drug use is to begin prevention efforts before children start using drugs. Prevention efforts that focus on young children are the most effective means to fight drug use.

Fact Sheet

Youth and Alcohol

• Alcohol use is widespread. By their senior year of high school nearly 90 percent of students will have tried alcoholic beverages. Despite a legal drinking age of 21, junior and senior high school students drink 35 percent of all wine coolers sold in the United States. They also drink an estimated 1.1 billion bottles and cans of beer each year.
• Drinking has acute effects on the body. The heavy, fast-paced drinking that young people commonly engage in quickly alters judgment, vision, coordination, and speech and often leads to dangerous risk-taking behavior. Because young people have lower body weight than adults, youth absorb alcohol into their blood system faster than adults and exhibit greater impairment for longer periods of time. Alcohol use not only increases the likelihood of being involved in an accident, it increases the risk of serious injury in an accident because of its harmful effects on numerous parts of the body.
• Alcohol-related highway accidents are the principal cause of death among young people ages 15 through 24. Alcohol use is the primary cause of traffic accidents involving teenage drivers. Furthermore, about half of all youthful deaths in drowning, fires, suicide, and homicide are alcohol-related.
• Any alcoholic beverage can be misused. Contrary to popular belief, drinking beer or wine can have effects similar to drinking "hard" liquor. A bottle of beer, a glass of wine, or a bottle of wine cooler have about the same amount of ethyl alcohol as a drink made with liquor. Those who drive "under the influence" are most likely to have been drinking beer.
• Early alcohol use is associated with subsequent alcohol dependence and related health problems. Youth who use alcohol at a younger age are more likely to use alcohol heavily and to experience alcohol-related problems affecting their relationships with family and friends by late adolescence. Their school performance is likely to suffer, and they are more likely to be truant. They are also more likely to abuse other drugs and to get in trouble with the law, or, if they are girls, to become pregnant.

Effects of Drug Use

• Drugs can interfere with memory, sensation, and perception. They distort experiences and cause a loss of self-control that can lead users to harm themselves and others.
• Drugs interfere with the brain's ability to take in, sort, and synthesize information. As a result, sensory information runs together, providing new sensations while blocking normal ability to understand the information received.
• Drugs can have an insidious effect on perception; for example, cocaine and amphetamines often give users a false sense of functioning at their best while on the drug. Drug suppliers have responded to the increasing demand for drugs by developing new strains, producing reprocessed, purified drugs, and using underground laboratories to create more powerful forms of illegal drugs. Consequently, users are exposed to heightened or unknown levels of risk.
• The marijuana produced today is from 5 to 20 times stronger than that available as recently as 10 years ago. Regular use by adolescents has been associated with an "amotivational syndrome," characterized by apathy and loss of goals. Research has shown that severe psychological damage, including paranoia and psychosis, can occur when marijuana contains 2 percent THC, its major psychoactive ingredient. Since the early 1980s, most marijuana has contained from 4 to 6 percent THC-two or three times the amount capable of causing serious damage.
• Crack is a purified and highly addictive form of cocaine.
• Phencyclidine (PCP), first developed as an animal tranquilizer, has unpredictable and often violent effects. Often children do not even know that they are using this drug when PCP-laced parsley in cigarette form is passed off as marijuana, or when PCP in crystal form is sold as lysergic acid (LSD).
• Some of the "designer" drugs, slight chemical variations of existing illegal drugs, have been known to cause permanent brain damage with a single dose.

Fact Sheet

Cocaine: Crack

• Crack is inexpensive to try. Crack is available for as little as $5. As a result, the drug is affordable to many potential users, including high school and even elementary school students.
• Crack is easy to use. It is sold in pieces resembling small white gravel or soap chips and is sometimes pressed into small pellets. Crack can be smoked in a pipe or put into a cigarette. The visible effects disappear within minutes after smoking, so detection is difficult.
• Crack is extremely addictive. Crack is far more addictive than heroin or barbiturates. Because crack is smoked, it is quickly absorbed into the blood stream. It produces a feeling of extreme euphoria, peaking within seconds. Repeated use of crack can lead to addiction within a few days.
• Crack leads to crime and severe psychological disorders. Many youths, once addicted, have turned to stealing, prostitution, and drug dealing in order to support their habit. Continued use can produce violent behavior and psychotic states similar to schizophrenia.
• Crack is deadly. Cocaine in any form, including crack, can cause sudden death from cardiac arrest or respiratory failure.

Drug Use and Learning

Drug use is closely tied to being truant and dropping out of school. High school seniors who are heavy drug users are more than three times as likely to skip school as nonusers. About one-fifth of heavy users skipped three or more school days a month, more than six times the truancy rate of nonusers. In a Philadelphia study, dropouts were almost twice as likely to be frequent drug users as were high school graduates; four in five dropouts used drugs regularly.

Drug use is associated with crime and misconduct that disrupt the maintenance of an orderly and safe school atmosphere conducive to learning. Drugs not only transform schools into marketplaces for dope deals, they also lead to the destruction of property and to classroom disorder. Among high school seniors, heavy drug users were more than three times as likely to vandalize school property and twice as likely to have been involved in a fight at school or at work as nonusers. Students on drugs create a climate of apathy, disruption, and disrespect for others. For example, among teenage callers to a national cocaine hotline, 32 percent reported that they sold drugs, and 64 percent said that they stole from family, friends, or employers to buy drugs. A drug-ridden environment is a strong deterrent to learning not only for drug users but for other students as well.