STUDY FINDS CAMBRIA YOUTH IN PERIL

JOHNSTOWN -- There are some findings that jump out from the 121 pages of a
new survey on adolescent behavior in Cambria County.

By sixth grade, 8.6 percent of pupils said they drank alcohol in the
preceding month, and more than one-fifth of 10th-graders said they'd been
binge drinking during that time -- on average, 2.6 times.

As a group, a greater share of Cambria County youngsters reported recent
alcohol, tobacco or drug use than did their peers statewide, but they were
less likely to use marijuana or peddle drugs.

They were less likely than their counterparts across Pennsylvania to try to
steal a car or to go to school packing a gun, but 8.8 percent of them
reported attacking someone during the previous year with the intent to harm
- -- higher than state and national rates.

No matter what educators, public health officials and numbers dicers get
from the survey, the coordinator behind the report had a suggestion for
parents who read it.

"Those of you with 12-year-olds: Go home and look at them a little
differently," Diana Schroeder, program coordinator for the county Child and
Adolescent Health and Wellness Council, told a conference room filled with
educators and other professionals Thursday.

The report, covering about 1,900 youngsters -- sixth-, eighth- and
10th-graders from all but one public school district in Cambria County --
is the second confidential survey the Health and Wellness Council has
commissioned in two years to plumb the depth of risks that local students
face. It covers dangers ranging from alcohol consumption to bicycle helmet
use to youngsters' take on the social environment around them.

There is a dearth of similar studies from like-sized counties that the
Cambria County group can use as measuring sticks.

Still, Dr. Matthew Masiello, council member and pediatrics chairman at
Memorial Medical Center, said he thinks the survey shows that Cambria
County's teenage population "is doing very well."

The report shows mostly subtle shifts from the council's first survey, in
2000. But Schroeder was reluctant to draw conclusions from those shifts.

"Is it something we've done? Happenstance?" she said. "Two surveys don't
make a trend."

To try to put those surveyed at ease, the council kept each student's
results confidential. And to try to ferret out unreliable answers, test
writers built lie detectors into the surveys -- the same questions, asked
different ways, that would be tossed out if students gave inconsistent answers.

The test, dubbed "The Communities That Care Youth Survey" and used in areas
across the country, also tried to filter out students who turned into
braggadocios about drug consumption. For instance, results were tossed if
respondents reported using Derbisol. Derbisol isn't a drug; it's an
invention of the test writers.

Among the results:

Sixty-one percent of the Cambria County students reported drinking alcohol
sometime in their lives; 24 percent said it was in the previous month.

One in five 10th-graders reported smoking during the previous month,
averaging six cigarettes on days they smoked.

They generally lagged behind counterparts statewide when it came to use of
cocaine, club drugs, hallucinogens and methamphetamines. But 2.8 percent of
sixth-graders reported using inhalants sometime during the previous month,
compared with 0.7 percent statewide.

The share of students admitting ever using heroin was relatively small --
0.3 percent for sixth-graders, 1.2 percent for eighth-graders and 1.5
percent for 10th-graders. But those numbers outstripped state averages.

Almost 9 percent of the students reported attacking someone with the intent
to hurt them during the previous year; the rate was highest among
eighth-graders -- 11.5 percent.

In turn, 16 percent reported being threatened, hit or beaten up during the
previous year; 2.2 percent said they had been attacked by somebody carrying
a weapon. And while Schroeder said it's important for youngsters to inform
authority figures of attacks or bullying, "it was amazing to me the number
who said they told pets," she said.

Cambria County's counterattack against threats facing teenagers has ranged
from anti-drug education to in-school seminars in which students pledge to
battle bullying.

The messages have sunk in -- part way.

Masiello said Cambria County teenagers seem to have absorbed messages that
anything from cigarettes to packing weapons can be bad news. The next step
is to get them to practice it, he said.

"Kids know this stuff is bad," he said.