National Digest

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60% OF STUDENTS SAY HIGH SCHOOLS HAVE DRUGS

Half of all teen-agers this fall will attend a school at which drugs are
sold, used or kept, according to report released Wednesday by the National
Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

The survey of 1,000 students found that half said their school was not
drug-free. Sixty percent of high school students said there were drugs on
campus; 30 percent of middle school students said the same. The random
telephone survey of students aged 12-17 was conducted Oct. 20 to Nov. 5 by
QEV Analytics. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

The percentage of teen-agers who say there are drugs on campus has actually
dropped since 1998, said Joseph Califano, a former secretary of health,
education and welfare, who heads the group. But Califano said the high
number of schools in which drugs are present is still unacceptable.

"When parents start to feel as strongly about drugs in schools as they do
about asbestos in schools, we'll take a giant step forward," he said.

Califano said national efforts to keep schools drug-free have failed,
primarily because drug-prevention lessons don't address the factors that
lead students to experiment with drugs. Anti-drug programs abound, he said,
but many aren't based on sound science and few are compatible with others.

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