Efforts to combat teenage tobacco use and perception appear to be winning, while alcohol and marijuana use continue to be a popular choice among high school students.
Those were among the findings discussed at Tuesday evening's Cabell County Board of Education meeting by Anne McGee, the project director of the Cabell County Substance Abuse Prevention Partnership. The data shared came from more than 3,200 sixth- through 12th-grade students who took the PRIDE Survey during the 2010-2011 school year.
Created in 1982 by professors at Georgia State University and Western Kentucky University, PRIDE Surveys were adopted nationally by federal law in 1998 as an official measurement of adolescent drug use in America.
Cabell County started asking students to anonymously fill out the surveys in 2002, then using it again for the 2004-2005, 2006-2007, 2007-2008 school years before resuming it last year.
"Most of our students are making the right choices," McGee said, citing several areas of encouraging feedback.
Each year the eighth-grade students have taken the survey, results have shown a decline in the percent of students who said they had used alcohol, tobacco, marijuana or other illicit drugs in the previous 30 days. Marijuana went from about 16 percent in 2002 to just under 10 percent in the past year's survey. Alcohol fell sharply from about 23 percent in 2002 to about 10 percent in 2010-2011. And tobacco fell from about 21 percent in 2002 to about 10 percent last school year.
In addition, the age of first use has risen a full year since 2002 to 131/2-years-old.
McGee said tobacco prevention has made the greatest strides, according to the survey results as a whole. The perception of risk of tobacco was pretty consistent among all middle and high school students at about 88 percent. Alcohol and marijuana, meanwhile, showed a decline in students' risk of perception from sixth-grade on to juniors and seniors, dropping from 80 percent to 70 percent for alcohol and 86 percent to 65 percent for marijuana.
"They're getting the message about tobacco," McGee said. "We've got to work on alcohol and marijuana."
Tobacco use, however, is still higher than McGee said they want it to be. Nearly 20 percent of students reported to have used tobacco in the pervious month, and about 29 percent indicated they'd used it in the past year. Alcohol was at 22 percent in the past month and 43 percent in the previous 12 months.
McGree said the monthly figures are the most telling of how many students are using drugs, alcohol or tobacco on a regular basis. Among the illicit drugs, marijuana was above and beyond other narcotics. Nearly 17 percent had reported using it in the previous month, with 25 percent saying they had used it the past year.
Cocaine, uppers, downers, inhalants, hallucinogens, heroin, steroids, ecstasy, meth, prescription drugs, pain killers and over-the-counter drugs were all reported at less than 6 percent in the previous month and less than 8 percent in the previous year.
Focus groups conducted by two Marshall University psychology professors earlier this year found that students are keenly aware of the drug usage problems among their peer groups. Students felt that community efforts have not been effective and efforts had been pushed aside. They also want community leaders speaking out more on the issue, harsher penalties and more activities for youth.
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