TeenAgers Find Drugs Common in Schools, Survey Shows

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

Many teenagers find illegal drugs more common at school than in
their neighborhood, according to a new national survey that concludes
that drugs are a barrier to better education.

Fortyone percent of the high school students surveyed
said they had seen drugs sold at their school, while 25
percent reported seeing them sold in their neighborhood.
But only 36 percent of the students said they would
report another student who peddled illegal drugs.

By contrast, 12 percent of high school teachers and 14
percent of middle and high school principals said they
had seen drugs sold on their school grounds.

Joseph A. Califano Jr., the president of the National
Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University, the organization that commissioned the
survey, said that national education standards sought by
President Clinton would be of little help to schools as
long as drugs were so available.

"Until we get drugs out of our schools, we're not going
to have the kind of quality education that everybody
dreams about," Califano, who served as Secretary of
Health, Education and Welfare in the Carter
administration, said in a telephone interview.

The survey did not differentiate on most questions
between marijuana and harder drugs like heroin or
cocaine, but marijuana has become the drug most popular
with adolescents, after alcohol. Twentyfour percent of
the teenagers surveyed said they could buy marijuana in
an hour or less, and 56 percent said they knew someone
who had tried harder drugs.

Yet the survey reported that parents and teachers
underestimate youthful concern about drugs, which 35
percent of the teenagers identified as the most
important problem they face.

The survey depicted many teachers as not overly worried
about casual marijuana use offcampus, with 51 percent
of the high school teachers and 41 percent of the middle
school teachers agreeing that a teenager can smoke
marijuana on weekends and still do well in school. Among
the students, only 24 percent believed that weekend
marijuana use would not affect their grades.

An overwhelming number of teachers said they would
support the automatic expulsion of a student caught with
drugs at school, random searches of lockers and drug
testing of athletes. But a majority of teachers objected
to testing all students for drugs, while a small
majority of teenagers supported the practice.

The national survey, Califano said, is the first to ask
teachers and principals, as well as parents and
adolescents, what they think about the use of drugs,
alcohol and tobacco. Detailed questionnaires were
completed by 1,115 adolescents age 12 to 17, 998
parents, 789 middle and high school teachers and 410
school principals representing schools of all sizes in
urban, suburban and rural communities across the
country.

"This is a very accurate portrayal of the nation's
schools," said J. Steven Wagner, the president of QEV
Analytics, who designed the survey and analyzed the
results.

"It is very clear to me that the presence of drugs has
diminished the quality of education," Wagner said.
"They're a tremendous distraction to the educational
process as well as being injurious to the students."

Indeed, 28 percent of the high school teachers and 19
percent of the middle school teachers said that they had
a student show up apparently drunk or high at least once
a month. Nearly threequarters of the high school
students and half of the middle school students said
that someone at their school has been expelled or
suspended for a drug offense.

High school students surveyed said on average that about
half of their classmates use marijuana at least once a
month, but only 21 percent admitted to having smoked
marijuana themselves. The high school teachers estimated
on average that 40 percent of their students have tried
marijuana.

"The actual use of drugs is always much higher than what
is reported,"Wagner explained.

Not surprisingly, the survey found that students at
schools where marijuana is available were four times
likelier to try it than students at drugfree schools.
And 51 percent of the teenagers who attended schools
where drugs are sold said they attended a party within
the last six months where marijuana was used, compared
with 23 percent of teenagers at drugfree schools.

The survey was conducted by Luntz Research Companies and
QEV Analytics from June 7 to July 7 this year. Its
margin of sampling error was 2.9 percent for
adolescents, 3.1 percent for parents, 3.5 percent for
teachers and 4.9 percent for the smaller sample of
school principals.

Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company