Survey Sheds Light On Drug And Alcohol Use By Newtown’s Youth

By Eliza Hallabeck

For the last couple of years Newtown students have been monitored by a survey that asks questions most parents are afraid to hear the answers to, and this year’s survey sheds light on the prevalence of drug and alcohol use among students in grades seven through 12.

Students in Newtown were surveyed this April by the Newtown Public Schools and the Newtown Prevention Council to determine the alcohol, tobacco and other drugs usage by the students and the frequency of their use.

The survey asks the students to respond to questions like, Have you ever used marijuana? If you do, how many times have you used it in the past month?

As explained in a summary of the survey, proportionally Newtown students generally reported smoking cigarettes less than the number of students who reported smoking cigarettes nationwide. The percentage of students who reported drinking alcohol in Newtown was higher than the national percentage, but Newtown students drink less per month than students on the national level. The use of inhalants is also higher among Newtown students than it is among national students.

Students who smoke cigarettes and smoke regularly are lower than the national average, but students who use marijuana and inhalants are higher than the national average.

“The Governor’s Prevention Initiative for Youth Survey measures the prevalence of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use among youth in Newtown, as well as collecting information about substance-related risks and assets. The same survey was administered to a representative sample of seventh through twelfth grade students in April 2005 and 2007,” according to the summary.

The district has given periodic substance use surveys since the early 1990s, according to the summary, and the survey is a collaborative project by the Newtown Public Schools and Newtown Prevention Council with the purpose of preventing substance use and abuse. The results of the 2002 Governor’s Prevention Initiative for Youth student survey were used to obtain a Department of Health and Human Services Drug-Free Communities Support Grant, according to the summary.

The summary also says the purpose of the survey is to help the mission of “all children can and will learn well,” which is used for the town’s mission of growth in the schools in general.

According to the summary, “The national data comes from a document called Monitoring the Future, National Results on Adolescent Drug Use from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The 2006 national report gives data from a sample of approximately 50,000 eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade students. Although the Newtown data is given by combined grades seven, eight, nine, ten, 11 and 12, the national survey data is used as a reference to judge how typical the responses are for the particular age group.”

The purpose of the survey was to decrease perception of acceptance by peers of alcohol use, decrease perception of acceptance by adults of alcohol use, increase perception of harm of alcohol, increase age of onset of alcohol consumption, change cultural norms favorable to underage drinking, according to the summary of the survey.