JENKINTOWN SURVEY FINDS DRUG ABUSE HIGH AMONG YOUTH ALCOHOL

Alcohol and marijuana use topped U.S. average, according to students.

JENKINTOWN -- School district officials have released the results of a drug
survey that showed alcohol to be the drug of choice for the majority of
students in grades six through 12.

Alcohol use exceeded the national average among Jenkintown's eighth through
12th graders, district officials said at a meeting Monday.

The PRIDE survey, conducted by the Atlanta-based National Parents' Resource
for Drug Education, was administered to 285 Jenkintown students in February.

This was the fourth year students in Jenkintown participated in the survey.
The tiny district, which has only two schools, had a total enrollment of 610
this year. In addition to which drugs were used, the report also included
statistics on when they were used, their accessibility, and students'
perception of the danger of drugs.

"Fifty-five percent of eighth graders thought it was very easy to get beer,"
said Judy Meier, Jenkintown High School guidance counselor. Equally
troubling, Meier said, was a dramatic jump in drug and alcohol use between
the seventh and eighth grades.

"As students get older, they don't worry as much" about the harmful effects
of substance abuse, she said of the survey's findings. "There is use, and it
does exist here."

Sixty-one percent of 10th graders said they used marijuana, the survey
found, almost twice the national average of 33 percent. Among high school
seniors, 55 percent said they smoked marijuana, compared with a national
average of 38 percent, Meier said. Because some students exaggerated in the
anonymous survey, administrators said, a margin of error should be expected.

Although the survey indicated that drug use in Jenkintown occurs mostly on
weekends and less frequently at school, the small group of parents in
attendance at Monday's meeting were concerned. The bulk of the
responsibility for addressing drug and alcohol awareness, one mother said,
was with the parents.

"The teachers are doing everything they can," said parent Gigi Burns, who
added that she had tried to get district administrators to focus on a local
drug and alcohol problem.

"I'm upset with the community's refusal to step forward and recognize the
problem," Burns said. She said she would continue to generate community
discussion on what she called a growing problem here.

A police-run Drug Abuse Resistance Education program and several antidrug
student groups in the district were helping, school officials said. Still,
75 of the 285 students polled reported that they had been in trouble with
police, Meier said.

Calls placed to the district's superintendent and the principals of the
elementary and high schools were not returned yesterday.

The numbers of children using drugs and alcohol in the district surprised
Jenkintown Police Chief Craig Rickard, who spoke at the meeting.

"I'm stunned, frankly," Rickard said. "I can see where my work is here."