09/05/01: Schools, Drugs, Alcohol

[Freakapotimus]

Wednesday September 05 09:39 AM EDT

Drugs, Booze Rampant in Secondary Schools
By ABCNEWS.com

As 14 million students return to school this week, drugs and alcohol will be as much a part of the educational experience as reading, writing and arithmetic, researchers say.

During this school year, more than 13 million students will try tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs for the first time, a report released by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found. Meanwhile, substance abuse and addiction will add at least $41 billion — 10 percent — to the costs of elementary and secondary education this year, as schools are forced to pay the costs of class disruption and violence, tutoring, truancy and teacher turnover.

Joseph Califano, president of the National Center on Addiction, told Good Morning America the six-year study found that parents need to get much more involved in getting drugs out of the schools.

"If there's asbestos in a school, parents raise hell about it and they won't send their kids to school until it's out of there," Califano said. "Yet they send their kids to schools riddled with drugs every day. I mean when parents start to feel as strongly about drugs in school as they do about asbestos in school, we'll take a major step."

Here are some of the report's findings:

By the time students reach 12th grade and receive their high school diplomas:

70 percent will have smoked cigarettes

81 percent will have drunk alcohol

almost 50 percent will have used marijuana.

24 percent will have used other illicit drugs.

Malignant Neglect?

In the 110-page report, Malignant Neglect: Substance Abuse and America's Schools , researchers have some tough words to describe what's happening in American schools.

Over the past six years, CASA surveyed 12- to 17-year-olds and their teachers, principals and parents about their attitudes toward tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs. No one, it seemed, was taking responsibility for American kids' substance abuse problems.

"The finger pointing and denial constitute a conspiracy of silence that threatens millions of our nation's children and savages many of them for life," the report says. "Parents deny that their child or their child's friends could be using drugs. School administrators have every incentive to downplay the extent of smoking, drinking and drug use on school grounds. Teachers claim it is their job to teach math, reading or history, not to spot or police substance use by their pupils."

And other students, especially juniors and seniors in high school, do not report classmates who are using or stealing drugs, the report says. Yet, according to those statistics, drugs aren't hard to find.

More than half of high school students, between the ages of 15 and 17, and almost a quarter of middle school students, ages 12 to 14, say they know someone at their school who can sell them drugs.

The effects are disastrous for education, the report found. The more a student uses alcohol, marijuana and other illicit drugs, the lower his grade point average is likely to be. High school students who use alcohol or other drugs frequently are up to five times more likely than other students to drop out of school.

See No Evil

Although no one takes the blame, parents, teachers and communities, should share it, the report said. Parents fail to be actively engaged in their child's life while teachers and principals fail to keep drugs off the premises.

Another key problem is communities that lack out-of-school activities for children and do not enforce laws that prohibit the sale of cigarettes and alcohol to minors. To make matters worse, the communities do not provide treatment for substance-abusing teens, the report says.

"The collective response is reminiscent of the three monkeys guarding the Shogun's stable: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," the report said. "For the most part, we close our eyes or look the other way; we choose not to speak up and demand that our schools be substance free."

[Shrapnel]

At 9/5/01 10:47 AM, Freakapotimus wrote:

Here are some of the report's findings:

By the time students reach 12th grade and receive their high school diplomas:

70 percent will have smoked cigarettes

81 percent will have drunk alcohol

almost 50 percent will have used marijuana.

24 percent will have used other illicit drugs.

Malignant Neglect?

Where are the virginity stats?

What's drugs and alcohol without the sex????

[pyroarchy]

At 9/6/01 03:41 AM, Shrapnel wrote:

At 9/5/01 10:47 AM, Freakapotimus wrote:

Here are some of the report's findings:

By the time students reach 12th grade and receive their high school diplomas:

70 percent will have smoked cigarettes

81 percent will have drunk alcohol

almost 50 percent will have used marijuana.

24 percent will have used other illicit drugs.

Malignant Neglect?

Where are the virginity stats?

What's drugs and alcohol without the sex????

whats the current dropout rate? i dropped out, and to find it was the best thing i did that year.

[Freakapotimus]

At 9/6/01 03:41 AM, Shrapnel wrote: Where are the virginity stats?
What's drugs and alcohol without the sex????

I have seen virginity stats somewhere else, but not with this article.

Which reminds me: there's a high school in Bucks County (I forget which school it is though) that is rated the best in the county for academics, particularly mathematics. It also had the highest pregnancy rate of any high school in the county.

[Pecos]

The problem with drugs in schools is media talking about drugs in schools! They popularize it.. this is what happened with the glue sniffing epidemic.. check it out - http://mir.drugtext.org/druglibrary/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cu44.htm

I actually had to read this for a Critical Reasoning class back in school. But it's very interesting to see how the media is the main cause for many of our problems today (drug use, school violence, etc.).

[Pecos]

At 9/6/01 10:07 AM, Freakapotimus wrote: Which reminds me: there's a high school in Bucks County (I forget which school it is though) that is rated the best in the county for academics, particularly mathematics. It also had the highest pregnancy rate of any high school in the county.

I'm not sure if you're talking about my high school, but mine's got problems now too.. Council Rock was considered one of the top public schools on the east coast 5 years ago (when i went there). They had the highest paid teachers. But now if you're looking to score some heroin, Council Rock is the place to be! The school was actually mentioned on 20/20 once.

[shorbe]

So let me get this straight...

If they're trying to encourage girls to break into the traditionally male fields of mathematics and physics, all they need to do is get them to fuck?

Sounds like a win-win scenario.

I'm all for chicks having to fuck their way to higher grades...hehe

shorbe

[Freakapotimus]

At 9/8/01 12:06 PM, shorbe wrote: I'm all for chicks having to fuck their way to higher grades...hehe

I had a serious boyfriend my last year of high school, and I *still* passed calculus, AND got a 4 on my AP exam! :)

[Pecos]

At 9/10/01 10:29 AM, Freakapotimus wrote: I had a serious boyfriend my last year of high school, and I *still* passed calculus, AND got a 4 on my AP exam! :)

I just had a bunch of random chicks I hooked up with, and I passed all 4 levels of calculus.. how did this subject come up anyway?? o_O

[Freakapotimus]

At 9/10/01 10:50 AM, UnclePecos wrote: I just had a bunch of random chicks I hooked up with, and I passed all 4 levels of calculus.. how did this subject come up anyway?? o_O

Because sex wasn't mentioned in the poll, we felt the need to bring it up ourselves :)

[Pecos]

At 9/10/01 11:25 AM, Freakapotimus wrote:

At 9/10/01 10:50 AM, UnclePecos wrote: I just had a bunch of random chicks I hooked up with, and I passed all 4 levels of calculus.. how did this subject come up anyway?? o_O

Because sex wasn't mentioned in the poll, we felt the need to bring it up ourselves :)

What about animal sex? :)

[Freakapotimus]

At 9/10/01 11:42 AM, UnclePecos wrote: What about animal sex? :)

Do you mean sex with animals, or wild, hot, passionate monkey love?

[pyroarchy]

At 9/12/01 10:18 AM, Freakapotimus wrote:

At 9/10/01 11:42 AM, UnclePecos wrote: What about animal sex? :)

Do you mean sex with animals, or wild, hot, passionate monkey love?

I've always been intrested by necro-beastiality...