SURVEY LOOKS AT YOUTH DRUG, ALCOHOL ABUSE IN ROCKLAND

Carmela Raiti was drawn to the Palisades Center last night to learn more
about the temptations of alcohol and other drugs facing the children she knows.

She was skeptical that drug use was as low as the third survey by the
Parents Resource Institute for Drug Education indicated it was for Rockland
pre-teens and teens.

"I think there's easier access to drugs than we as parents want to
believe," said Raiti, a Chestnut Ridge mother of a 15-year-old son and an
11-year-old daughter. "There's a lot of peer pressure and opportunities out
there."

The PRIDE survey of nearly 7,000 Rockland students showed that little had
changed in the use of alcohol and other drugs by high school students,
while the incidence of use by younger students was on the decline.

The reasons for the high school-age findings could vary, said Walter
Schneider, dean of students at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, who
has collated the results since 1995.

"You're out more, you're less supervised, perhaps," Schneider said before a
discussion of the findings last night attended by about 130 educators, drug
abuse prevention and treatment professionals, as well as social workers and
parents.

"You also may go to parties where there is beer and wine," he said. "That's
not happening in eighth grade."

The most recent survey, done last year in seven of eight Rockland public
school districts -- Nanuet does its own -- was of fifth-, eighth-, and
10th-graders. It showed nearly 17 percent of 2,100 students in 10th grade
drinking alcohol weekly, while 5.1 percent of 2,500 eighth-graders reported
drinking with the same regularity.

Of the eighth-graders, 35 percent reported drinking in the past year, down
from 50.4 percent in 1995.

Tenth-graders showed a decline to 58 percent last year from 62.4 percent in
1995. Both were close to results of a national survey.

National figures compiled by PRIDE surveys of Bowling Green, Ky., from
15,287 eighth-graders and 11,123 10th-graders, showed 33.9 percent of
eighth-graders and 52.9 percent of 10th-graders drank beer in the past year.

Illicit drug (mostly marijuana) usage was down among Rockland
eighth-graders, and up slightly for 10th-graders.

In 1995, 13.1 percent of eighth-graders reported using illegal drugs
monthly. That figure dropped to 7 percent in 2001. For 10th-graders, drug
use rose to 21.6 percent last year from 20.1 percent in 1995.

Una Diffley, a public health education coordinator for the county
Department of Health, said before the meeting that older students were
getting more attention.

The Health Department this year expanded an anti-tobacco program targeting
13- through 18-year-olds.

It has gone from one school to 10 locations in every Rockland school
district as well as community youth groups.

Efforts of the statewide Reality Check program are funded by state and
local tobacco settlement money, said Denise Taylor, program coordinator.

Cigarette smoking was reported down at all grade levels, but the smallest
decline was in the 10th grade.

Eighth-graders reporting they smoked in the past year were 14.7 percent in
2001, down from 37.8 percent in 1995. The level for 10th-graders dropped to
32.3 percent in 2001, from 41.2 percent in 1995.

Smoking cigarettes at least twice per month was reported by 5.4 percent of
eighth-graders last year, down from 17.3 percent in 1995.

For 10th-graders, the number dropped to 16.8 percent last year from 24.4
percent in 1995.

PRIDE's national surveys showed 26.8 percent of eighth-graders and 40.5
percent of 10th-graders smoked in the past year. Jeanne Marks of New City,
who has an 11-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son, thought communication
between parent and child was key to preventing drug usage.

"I remember being older when I was exposed to things," she said.
"Everything seems to hit them earlier now."

Ron Figueroa, project director of the Rockland Alliance for Prevention,
said children were never too old to be reminded of dangers awaiting them in
a pack of smokes or a bottle of wine.

"The older they get, the less their parents talk to them about it,"
Figueroa said before the meeting, "and the less they learn about it in school."