Pubdate: Tue, 20 May 2003 Source: Powell River Peak (CN BC) Copyright: 2003 Peak Publishing Ltd. Contact: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1998 Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/734 HALF OF YOUTH SURVEYED HAVE TRIED MARIJUANA Calling themselves Team Soapbox, seven youth recently completed a high school retention project that included surveying youth and collecting data. Caitlin Bryant, Junior Luaifoa, Mike Jacques, Rachelle Spencer, Karen Kimball, Robbie Holmgren and coordinator Erin Hasler spent from October 2002 to March 2003 working on the project, which was funded by Youth Services Canada through Career Link. Team Soapbox started researching the dropout rate in the North Island region--which includes Powell River--to learn what influences students to leave school early. Individuals, community groups and organizations were surveyed. One of the components of Team Soapbox's project was to make a presentation to students about the importance of completing high school. In the project's executive summary, Lyn Adamson, program director of Career Link, noted how Team Soapbox met with a "great deal" of resistance to making the Stay in School presentations. "Two schools chose not to have the team attend at all, defending their decisions because they felt that there wasn't a dropout problem in their environment," she said. As part of the survey a wide range of questions was asked on a variety of issues team members believed affect the dropout rate. Issues ranged from bullying to drugs to teen pregnancy to homework overload. The following questions asked were to 381 youth about drugs. This is what they said: 192 50% have tried or use pot 94 25% have tried or use mushrooms 45 12% have tried or use acid 52 14% have tried or use ecstasy 44 12% have tried or use cocaine 15 4% have tried or use heroin Out of 242 students in grade eight and nine who completed the survey: 99 41% responded yes to having tried or used pot Of those: 16 7% use pot daily 40 17% use pot weekly or sometimes 43 18% had tried it - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake