PREVENTION KEY TO REDUCING DRUG, ALCOHOL USE AMONG TEENS

Wherever you go, there will always be high school kids who drink, do drugs
and lie to their parents about it. The area covered by the Saratoga Springs
school district is no exception.

You can ignore it. You can wring your hands over it. Or you can do something
positive about it.

We are happy to report that positive and successful things are being done to
discourage local youth from using drugs and alcohol. The approach is
preventive, and the lead organization is the aptly named Saratoga
Partnership for Prevention.

On Thursday, the partnership will present to the school board a summary of
its latest surveys measuring the use of drugs and alcohol by sixth-through
eighth-graders as well as their attitudes and their parents' attitudes about
drugs, booze and community and family relationships. The survey results,
along with the partnership's initiatives since its inception three years
ago, are positive overall.

But there are trouble spots - big ones. The number of younger kids was
pretty much on par or below the national average concerning drinking and
drugs, and all ages were below average in cigarette smoking. But older kids
are a concern:

* Almost 60 percent of Saratoga Springs High School seniors said they drank
alcohol in the last 30 days, compared to just less than 50 percent in
studies nationally. The local survey was conducted in the fall, not now,
when proms and graduation parties could skew the results.

* Forty percent of high school seniors said they had five or more drinks in
a row during the past two weeks, compared to 30 percent nationally. Having
that many drinks in one sitting is considered binge drinking.

* Twenty-six percent of 10th-graders, 31 percent of 11th-graders and 34
percent of seniors said they smoked pot in the past 30 days. The national
average is less than 20 percent for 10th-graders and just more than 22
percent for seniors (information is not available for 11th-graders).

What's more, kids have their parents bamboozled. If you adults think you
used to put something over on your parents, meet the experts:

* Almost 65 percent of parents said their high school student had never used
alcohol, but 72 percent of the students (in all the grades combined)
reported having had a drink in the last 30 days.

* Less than 1 percent of parents thought their students drank frequently,
but 48 percent of the students reported drinking on five or more occasions
in the previous month.

So, what's a community to do? Focus on prevention.

The Saratoga Partnership for Prevention should be supported by the community
as it puts together programs that focus on building relationships that
encourage smart and safe decisions and making drugs and alcohol less
accessible to youth.

We were glad to see, for instance, that the new school budget included
$10,000 for a DARE camp whose focus is on easing the transition of
elementary schoolchildren into middle school. It's a perfect example of
partnership members, in this case the school district (district official
Stephanie Lang has been instrumental in the creation of the partnership and
development of its initiatives) and police department (which is well
represented on the partnership by Sgt. Gary Forward and DARE officer John
Kelly). In a similar vein, a committee for the district is also looking at
ways to smooth the social and academic transition from middle school to high
school.

In its short existence, the Saratoga Partnership for Prevention has
identified programs and created initiatives sufficient to earn the 2003
Human Services Program of the Year award from the state Council of Community
Services. The success is in no small part due to the involvement of myriad
organizations under the leadership of The Prevention Council, a countywide
organization whose reach is broader than the partnership's and whose
expertise and resources have been invaluable. But their efforts can be
successful only when the community as a whole buys into the goals and gets
involved in achieving them.

That people care enough to have this partnership in the first place is
reason to be optimistic about the future of the community and its youth.

To learn more about the Saratoga Partnership for Prevention and its surveys
and programs, call 581-1230. The school board meeting is at 7 p.m. Thursday
at the teaching auditorium at the high school.