Pubdate: Thu, 29 Apr 2004
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2004 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Dan Stober and Joshua L. Kwan, Mercury News
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

TEENAGERS MISJUDGE DRUG USE

Survey Shows Figures Are Lower Than Students Think

Drug and alcohol use by students at Palo Alto's public high schools and 
middle schools is not nearly as high as students think it is, a survey that 
drew responses from 75 percent of those students showed.

Leaders of the community group that sponsored the survey hope to use the 
results to reach "the kids who are saying, everybody's doing it so I will, 
too," said Becky Beacom, the health education manager for the Palo Alto 
Medical Foundation.

The anonymous survey of 4,062 students at Palo Alto's two high schools and 
three middle schools leaves no doubt that some students drink alcohol and 
smoke pot. Twenty-eight percent of the high school students said they have 
a drink in a typical month, and 28 percent have smoked marijuana. 
Twenty-one percent use tobacco.

But, Beacom said, turning those statistics around demonstrates that most 
students neither drink nor smoke pot or cigarettes -- and students don't 
understand that. The survey revealed the majority of students think that 
drinking and drug use is the social norm, that "it's skyrocketing, it's 
horrible," Beacom said.

That misperception "can actually increase teen substance use, as 
adolescents feel pressured to conform to what they believe is the norm -- 
even if that belief is wrong," Beacom said.

The survey was sponsored by the Community Drug & Alcohol Prevention 
Collaborative, whose members come from the school district, the police 
department, the Palo Alto Foundation for Education, PTA chapters, 
Adolescent Counseling Services and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.

The foundation paid for the survey, which was conducted by a team from 
Montana State University. Individual schools and PTAs and the Palo Alto 
Weekly Holiday Fund also contributed money to the project.

Natalie Campen, a sixth-grader at Jordan Middle School in Palo Alto, said 
her parents have been her most persistent and effective educators when it 
comes to substance abuse.

"Since they're doctors, they always tell me how bad drugs are," Natalie said.

Natalie's mother, Christine Chang, is a psychiatrist at Valley Medical 
Center in San Jose.

"I suppose we're all kind of feeling that there wasn't much drug or alcohol 
use in our schools, but then there was a girl in Belmont, a middle-schooler 
who overdosed on 'ecstasy,' and that was an eye-opener," Chang said. That 
girl died Wednesday at Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at 
Stanford, five days after she took the drug.

The collaborative and the school board plan to use the survey results in 
the schools -- in posters or computer screen-saver messages -- to change 
student perceptions. "It give kids an accurate context of their social 
environment with which to make their decisions," Beacom said.

Even students who totally abstain suffer as a result of misperceptions, she 
said, if they won't go to a dance because they believe "everybody's drunk."

"Maybe now they'll go," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager