TEENAGERS MISJUDGE DRUG USE

Survey Shows Figures Are Lower Than Students Think

Drug and alcohol use by students at Palo Alto's public high schools and
middle schools is not nearly as high as students think it is, a survey that
drew responses from 75 percent of those students showed.

Leaders of the community group that sponsored the survey hope to use the
results to reach "the kids who are saying, everybody's doing it so I will,
too," said Becky Beacom, the health education manager for the Palo Alto
Medical Foundation.

The anonymous survey of 4,062 students at Palo Alto's two high schools and
three middle schools leaves no doubt that some students drink alcohol and
smoke pot. Twenty-eight percent of the high school students said they have
a drink in a typical month, and 28 percent have smoked marijuana.
Twenty-one percent use tobacco.

But, Beacom said, turning those statistics around demonstrates that most
students neither drink nor smoke pot or cigarettes -- and students don't
understand that. The survey revealed the majority of students think that
drinking and drug use is the social norm, that "it's skyrocketing, it's
horrible," Beacom said.

That misperception "can actually increase teen substance use, as
adolescents feel pressured to conform to what they believe is the norm --
even if that belief is wrong," Beacom said.

The survey was sponsored by the Community Drug & Alcohol Prevention
Collaborative, whose members come from the school district, the police
department, the Palo Alto Foundation for Education, PTA chapters,
Adolescent Counseling Services and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.

The foundation paid for the survey, which was conducted by a team from
Montana State University. Individual schools and PTAs and the Palo Alto
Weekly Holiday Fund also contributed money to the project.

Natalie Campen, a sixth-grader at Jordan Middle School in Palo Alto, said
her parents have been her most persistent and effective educators when it
comes to substance abuse.

"Since they're doctors, they always tell me how bad drugs are," Natalie said.

Natalie's mother, Christine Chang, is a psychiatrist at Valley Medical
Center in San Jose.

"I suppose we're all kind of feeling that there wasn't much drug or alcohol
use in our schools, but then there was a girl in Belmont, a middle-schooler
who overdosed on 'ecstasy,' and that was an eye-opener," Chang said. That
girl died Wednesday at Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at
Stanford, five days after she took the drug.

The collaborative and the school board plan to use the survey results in
the schools -- in posters or computer screen-saver messages -- to change
student perceptions. "It give kids an accurate context of their social
environment with which to make their decisions," Beacom said.

Even students who totally abstain suffer as a result of misperceptions, she
said, if they won't go to a dance because they believe "everybody's drunk."

"Maybe now they'll go," she said.