On Wednesday, November 28, Shorewood Ripples distributed anonymous surveys about drug and alcohol use to a sample of homerooms from each grade. Recently, several students were randomly selected and interviewed. Some of those students spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the both legal and personal sensitivity of this subject.

When asked about students attitude towards the survey, Student A, an anonymous freshman girl, said, “I think that a lot of people were [answering honestly], but some people were making it worse than it actually was.”

People seemed to agree that the results were not far off. The students interviewed were asked if finding that 54 percent of students had ever tried alcohol or marijuana recreationally sounded accurate, which they did. Tim Kenney, vice-principal, said that that number didn’t surprise him.

On the other hand, Vince Peterson, the head of the physical education department at SHS, thought that this number was too low and pointed out that people do not always answer surveys of this nature honestly.

Before the survey was administered, Kenney said, “My impression is that use is pretty high. I really don’t have anything to substantiate that, other than what I just hear – students make comments about what people are doing, but they never give names, they just talk about the amount of use and the various substances that are being used.”

Most people seem to think that marijuana and alcohol use is widespread at SHS. Chris Saxon, sophomore, said, “I think it’s pretty much everywhere…kids in the hallways, even in the middle of class, start talking about it.”

Change From Previous Years
Although many people think that drug use is getting worse, it appears that some drugs are actually being used less than they have been in previous years and others are relatively constant. In 1992 and 1996, students in the Shorewood School District participated in a Survey of Needs. This survey analyzed anonymous student responses and compared them to other similar schools.

The data used for this article was found in the resulting Shorewood Ripples articles (found in Volume 71, Number 8 and Volume 74, Number 8).

The 1996 results showed 23 percent of Shorewood students had drunk alcohol before their freshmen year – this number dropped to 20 percent this year. However, 36 percent of freshmen reported having drunk in grade 8 or before compared with 16 percent of sophomores and juniors and 13 percent of seniors.

Many people feel drugs and alcohol are becoming more accepted. Gina Obiakor, senior, said, “It’s something that’s not talked about…it’s not considered to be a big deal, but it’s still used heavily.”

Obiakor also said that the serious political discussions about legalizing marijuana demonstrate society’s lax attitude towards drug use and make students feel that it is okay to use.

Saxon expressed a similar sentiment. Speaking specifically about marijuana use, he said, “It’s more accepted now, maybe not for hard drugs, but for other things.”

Peterson said, “I don’t know if it has changed much here, but in outlying communities drug use is getting worse.” He was referring to what he believed to be an increase in usage of drugs like heroin and cocaine in other schools near Milwaukee.

Chrissy Preston, Shorewood High School’s police liaison officer, thought that the number of students abusing prescription drugs has been growing.

On this subject, she said, “the availability is there, I think a lot of kids don’t see it as being as bad as [other drugs], because they can be used legally in some circumstances.”

Student A disagreed, saying, “A lot of people do drugs; I know a lot of people that do…but just pot.”
After asking specifically about use of alcohol and marijuana, our survey asked students to list any other drugs they had used and the frequency with which they used these drugs. 13 percent of these students reported using other drugs, with use being highest in senior boys.

Drugs listed included aderall, cocaine, psychedelic mushrooms, painkillers, and LSD. These statistics might be comparable to the data in 1996 which found that 17 percent of students had used hallucinogens within 12 months of the survey. This implies that while prescription drug abuse may be more common, many other drugs are far less popular than they were in the 1990s.

Much of this seems to be consistent with national statistics. An article based on the finding of the Monitoring the Future study, an annual survey of approximately 50,000 students from grade 12 since 1975 and also from grades eight and ten since 1991, stated that, “LSD, once a widely used drug, had a very sharp decline in use from about 2001 to 2005. There has not been much change since then.”

This article, titled “Overall, illicit drug use by American teens continues overall decline in 2007,” also stated that, “While most of the illicit drugs have shown considerable declines in use over the past decade or so, most prescription psychotherapeutic drugs did not; in fact, a number of them showed steady increases in use outside of their legitimate medical use.”

The Effect of Health Education
As a school, education is the primary way SHS combats drug use.

“Education is a huge factor in knowing about the risks and effects of drugs and alcohol.” Preston said. She went on to say that it is important for students to develop positive self-esteem at school, and that she believes it is “important to offer after school activities because the most common time for drug and alcohol use is from 3-6pm.”

The physical education teachers try “to teach responsible behavior,” said Peterson. “I think that our underlying philosophy can have a huge effect on students’ lives.”

Peterson said that this approach was more effective given the limited amount of time they have to cover each health topic. He said teaching students to make good choices is a skill that applies to all of the issues they discuss, from drug use to nutrition to sexual education.

However, it is obvious that this is not always successful. “The frustrating part of it is that we, as a school, do a pretty decent job of providing the information to the students,” said Kenney, “but ultimately the decisions are going to be up to the students.”

Student opinion on drug and alcohol education varies. Student A, who reported smoking marijuana and drinking frequently, said “[Health education] does have an effect, but it doesn’t make me stop.”
On the other hand, Saxon said he had never used drugs or alcohol illegally and that “they’ve turned some kids away because I know it has had a huge effect on me.”

In the survey, of the students that reported using drugs or alcohol, 36 percent answered “yes” to the question “Do you think your drug/alcohol use will affect your health later in life?” This percent was highest among sophomores and dropped off significantly for juniors and seniors.

Currently, health education is most concentrated in the freshmen year with a more abbreviated version taught during junior year.The physical education staff is currently working on revamping their curriculum so that these parts of students’ education extend more outside of the freshmen health class.

Both Kenney and Preston also referred to a budding parent education program. Kenney said that SHS provides students with resources so they “make informed decisions and parents should be able to too.”

Preston has already held parent forums early this winter; one was for intermediate school parents and the other for parents of high school students. She also said, “I anticipate speaking to students about drug and alcohol use.”
Kenney would also like her to be involved in the educational piece of the effort to reduce drug use in Shorewood. “She has a lot to offer by way of the things that she has seen and [can] shed some light for people because [they] don’t understand the significant damage that they are doing to themselves now by abusing these things, and they are not going to find out until later.”

Additional information on the survey:

Shorewood Ripples distributed this survey in order to get approximate statistics on an issue that has a considerable impact on most high schools. The surveys were given out during homeroom along with a note to homeroom advisers. This note requested that advisers hand out the surveys and have a student collect the folded, anonymous surveys in an envelope. We also included a short paragraph which the advisers we supposed to read assuring the students that the surveys could not be traced back to any individual and that no disciplinary action would be taken based on the survey. The envelopes were then returned to the Ripples mailbox.
The questionnaire was handed out to 73 seniors, 71 juniors, 101 sophomores, and 102 freshmen. We received 32 back from senior boys, 32 from senior girls, 35 from junior boys, 45 from junior girls, 16 from sophomore boys, 27 from sophomore girls, 34 from freshmen boys, and 32 from freshmen girls. All the statistics used in this study were computed from the returned surveys, and did not consider non-responses.

Click HERE for a copy of the survey.