FAIRFAX COUNTY YOUTH SURVEY DELIVERS BAD NEWS FOR PARENTS

The new 2009 Fairfax County Youth Survey released in late October
revealed a serious increase in teen marijuana use from the baseline
low rates reported in the 2005 survey.

Overall "recent-use" (past 30-day) rates for all students rose from
9.2 percent in 2005 to 11.6 percent in 2009, meaning a 26 percent
increase. Especially alarming was the rate for boys, which increased
36 percent.

Page 54 of the survey reads, "Usage ... increased from 2005 to 2009,
for all grades, genders and race/ethnicities." This increase is
consistent with national teen marijuana use trends. Experts say it is
mainly attributable to two primary influences: Massive publicity
about "medical marijuana" initiatives, which persuade teens that
marijuana must be harmless if it's OK for medicine, and the
proliferation of high-tech cell phones among students, giving local
pushers direct access to students in the market for drugs and alcohol.

However, some good news confirmed in the survey is that about half of
all students have never used alcohol or drugs, thus increasing their
chances of leading healthy and successful lives. Unfortunately, the
vast majority of parents believe their own child to be among the
non-users and thus have little interest in school drug-prevention
activities. Although the survey shows that all students are
endangered by drug- and alcohol-related destructive behaviors,
relatively few parents ever attend school drug-prevention assemblies.
Most believe the problem just doesn't apply to them -- although some
learn otherwise, often too late.

Under minimum inhibition from toothless juvenile crime rules, many of
the drug-using and drug-pushing students work overtime trying to
entice their non-using schoolmates to get involved. This uncontrolled
and undetected influence has been compared to the spread of
contagious diseases, which the disease of addiction essentially is.
It is the main reason teen drug use increases once a student has
started doing it, as affirmed on page 55 of the survey: "Reported use
of marijuana increases dramatically with age."

Drug education by itself has proven more than four decades of use to
be insufficient to protect the most-at-risk kids from the school drug
pushers and from destructive behaviors such as those identified in
the surveys. Drug education is essential, but it must be reinforced
with additional action in order to effectively reach all students and
leave no student behind on drugs.

To accomplish this goal and virtually eliminate student drug use,
thousands of schools throughout the nation today utilize health
screening of kids for exposure to drugs by use of non-punitive Random
Student Drug Testing (RSDT). This is the strong recommendation of
former U.S. Drug Czar John Walters as presented in his TV interview
about the massive 2008 Fairfax County heroin bust and drug overdose
death tragedy that claimed so many teen lives.

Therefore, in order to help fulfill their joint responsibility to
protect the health and safety of Fairfax County schoolchildren, both
the Board of Supervisors and the School Board should soon authorize
an official inquiry into the possible use of RSDT in Fairfax County
schools as a means to reverse the current tragic trends identified in
recent Youth Surveys.

DeForest Rathbone, chairman, National Institute of Citizen Anti-Drug
Policy, Great Falls