Pubdate: Fri, 05 May 2000 Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (AR) Copyright: 2000 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. Contact: 121 East Capitol Avenue, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201 Website: http://www.ardemgaz.com/ Forum: http://www.ardemgaz.com/info/voices.html Author: Jay Meisel CONWAY'S DRUG SURVEY WORRIES CHIEF OF SCHOOLS CONWAY -- The Conway School District plans to beef up drug prevention education and will consider administering random drug tests as a result of a drug usage survey among students, Superintendent James Fulmer said Thursday. The survey of students in grades seven through 12 netted results that are mostly consistent with national student surveys, but Fulmer said he is still concerned. "I think there's enough out there in the survey that we need to do something about it," he said. The district will look at its health curriculum to find ways to increase the number of drug prevention classes and also will look at the possibility of random drug testing for students participating in extracurricular activities, Fulmer said. The survey was conducted in November by the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research of the department of psychology of Colorado State University. Bev Marquart, who helped develop the survey and compile the results, said the survey included questions designed to weed out those who gave exaggerated or false answers. Students were asked if they had ever used certain drugs and if they had used any of those drugs in the past month, which would have included all or part of October. Although most of the numbers among 12th-grade students were similar to national averages, according to survey results, there were some that were higher. Five percent of the participating 12th-grade students in Conway said they had used cocaine in the past month, compared with 2 percent nationally. Also, 8 percent of 12th-grade students said they had used hallucinogens in the past month, compared with 4 percent nationally. At Conway Senior High School, which has 1,082 students in grades 11 and 12, Assistant Principal Mickey Siler said the survey does not contain any big surprises. "It puts into black and white what we already knew," he said. The survey shows that while not every student in the two grades is using drugs, "there are too many," he said. Among the other results, 54 percent of 12th-graders in Conway who participated in the survey said they had used alcohol in the last month, and 26 percent had used marijuana. That compares nationally with 52 percent using alcohol in the last month and 23 percent using marijuana. At the middle school level -- grades seven and eight -- alcohol use in the past month ranged anywhere from 11 percent to 24 percent, marijuana use from 3 percent to 11 percent and less than 1 percent to 2 percent for cocaine, according to the survey. The use of stimulants, which include methamphetamine, was relatively low for all grades, the survey reported. The percentages ranged from less than 1 percent to 3 percent in grades seven through nine, depending on the school, and 6 percent in grades 10 through 12. Among 11th-graders surveyed, 20.6 percent said their drug use was high, 18.3 percent moderate and 61.1 percent low, a percentage which includes those who aren't users, according to the survey. For 12th-graders, 22.3 percent defined their drug use as high, 21.4 percent moderate and 56.3 percent low, the survey states. The numbers of students in 12th grade who have tried drugs or alcohol are similar to national numbers, the survey indicates. At Conway High School, 85 percent of the seniors said they have tried alcohol, compared with 81 percent nationally; 49 percent tried marijuana, compared with the same percentage nationally; and 14 percent tried cocaine, compared with 9 percent nationally, the survey states. Only 6 percent of the 12th-graders have used depressants, compared with 9 percent nationally. The survey showed that a student's friends are often the determining factor in drug use. For example, 4 percent of those saying they are heavy alcohol users said friends would try to stop them from getting drunk. On the other hand, 39 percent of those who said they didn't use alcohol or used it infrequently said they had friends who would stop them from becoming drunk, the survey states. It also shows that students who use drugs on a regular basis are more likely to have committed a crime and more likely to have been arrested for breaking the law. The survey states that 59 percent of the students who said they were heavy users of drugs and/or alcohol said they had committed a crime, and 33 percent said they had been arrested at least once. That compares with 26 percent of the low users of drugs and alcohol who said they had committed a crime and 6 percent of that group who said they had been arrested, the survey states. "The drug users at Conway High School West [11th and 12th grades] are more likely to indicate that they have some kind of gang affiliation," the survey states. Of those students indicating a high drug usage, 75 percent said they had a family that "cares a lot." "For some reason, very few students at Conway High School West report that their families fight and argue a lot," the survey states. "This is an unusual finding, and some attention should be paid to why this would be true for this group of students," the report said. That may indicate that many of the students are not using drugs to escape from a bad home life but are instead using them for other reasons, Siler said. Many of the students, even though they may use drugs, are, in other respects, good kids from good families and "not doped-up fiends," he said. In the 12th grade, 96 percent of those surveyed said they believe alcohol is readily available to them, 89 percent said marijuana is readily available, 53 percent said cocaine is readily available and 30 percent said heroin is readily available. In response to a multiple-choice question, 60 percent of 11th-graders and 61 percent of 12th-graders said they used drugs at weekend parties. That indicates a need for the community to be involved in the effort to reduce drug use, Siler said. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart