Reading, writing and addiction

Reading, writing and addiction
Schools, counselors try to get a handle on 'out-of-control' teen drug problem

      Former First Lady Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, directed at adolescents in the 1980s, has lost much of its effectiveness, as the number of teenage drug abusers continues to climb, according to drug counselors on the South Shore.
      At a time when some counselors believe that more than half of parents smoke pot themselves, local school officials have been scrambling to convince students that using drugs is bad. And entering the new millennium, they are faced with a new challenge: trying to steer pre-adolescents away from using drugs.
      Adolescent drug use is out of control, counselors believe, because many kids are starting at an earlier age. It used to be that experimentation began typically with 16- to 17-year-olds; now, 11-year-olds are trying drugs, forcing school officials to reformulate their strategy and begin drug education as early as kindergarten.
      Drug abuse among teens is so prevalent that the topic has topped the agenda of the Nassau County Principals Association, which for three years has held special substance-abuse conferences at Hofstra University involving staff, students and parents. They have come away from the conferences forming drug-free student groups.
      This year, area schools are planning drug awareness weekends and theme weeks geared toward prevention.

Drugs: What's hot, what's not
      The progression of substance abuse usually follows a pattern, experts said. Kids will start with alcohol and cigarettes and then work their way to marijuana. By their late teenage years, they could graduate to heroin and ecstasy, known as the "club drug," an hallucinogen gaining greater popularity among teenagers at local high schools.
      The popularity of crack cocaine, the craze of the 1980s, is waning, drug counselors said. Marijuana remains highly popular, and heroin use has risen because it can now be snorted instead of injected into the bloodstream, counselors said.
      "Teenage drug use is rampant," said Wil John, program director for Committee on Drug Abuse, which serves teenage drug users in the Five Towns and the Rockaways. "There are kids that are in school and get high. Everybody knows there are drugs in school.
      "Parents have to stop lying to themselves and understand that their children are out of control. We need them back under control."
      Eileen Nomikos, clinical director for Long Island Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence, said students have told her that a tremendous amount of drugs are brought into high school by students, who even deal drugs in the hallways of some schools on Long Island.
      "I think that administrators are aware of it and they have tried to reach out," she said.
      Most drug abuse does not occur on school grounds but in homes and cars, said Barry Wilansky, executive director of Tempo Group, a drug counseling center with staff working on-site in the Five Towns, Lynbrook and Bellmore-Merrick. Fear of getting caught makes teens leery about using drugs at school, he said.
      Marian Abramson, a social worker at East Rockaway Junior/Senior High School, grades 7-12, said things are under control on school grounds where she is. She said students will often report other students who use drugs. "Students are now very aware that lockers can be searched and are. There are preventative measures we take. The bathrooms are monitored." No one is permitted to smoke even a cigarette on school grounds because that is state law, she said.
      Police maintain close ties with the schools and can be a force against teen substance abuse. They monitor activity and enforce drug-possession laws near schools, said Fourth Precinct Inspector George Gudmundsen. He said he has not heard of major drug-dealing at school but added "we would be naive to say not a marijuana joint or small amount of drugs" is present. "We are bound to have some drug activity in every school, regardless of the community. But it is a situation under control."
      Dennis Dunn, director of LINK Counseling Center in Lynbrook, which works primarily with Malverne High School students, said a number of kids are busted on their way to school or on school grounds because they are dealing drugs amid tighter school security. "So they have these secret places they kind of meet, a wooded area that might be on the periphery of the school.
      "I don't find schools as very radical or problem-oriented. I see them more as reactive and they don't really want to say there are all these problems," Dunn said. "That's finally caught up with them because there's so much going on in the schools. Kids are stoned a lot and they deal there."
      A new phenomenon, Dunn said, is that much of the time, not only are the parents not minimizing the drug use, but the kids are getting into their parents' stash of drugs. "And there may be more going on, drinking, marijuana and coke, on the parent level," he said. "In the previous generation, those people had no experience with drugs. They were more horrified by it and shocked by it. Now these parents were the '60s people and many of them are still using, so they have a different reaction and tend to be more defensive."
      Seven years ago, Tempo's Wilansky said, marijuana projected a different image for parents, a more threatening one. "Children today encounter drugs in user-friendly ways. Ten to 15 years ago it wasn't user-friendly. Your parent would flip out. It would be unacceptable. Now your parent doesn't flip out anymore. More than half the parents smoke pot themselves."
      But, he said, parents fail to realize that their age of onset was years older than their children's beginning age.
      Entering 2001, educators are refining their lessons to delay as much as possible the onset of substance abuse. "If you delay the onset, it means that people may in the long run get in a lot less trouble with drugs," said Abramson, the social worker in East Rockaway.
      The statistics back that up. A child who uses marijuana before the age of 12 is 42 times more likely to use cocaine, heroin and other drugs than one who smokes pot after age 16, according to a study released by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Numbers don't lie
      The numbers on Long Island are eye-opening. More than one in every five fifth- and sixth-graders consumed alcoholic beverages in 1998, according to the state Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services, which surveyed 3,298 students. One in every 14 smoked cigarettes. Among students in grades 7-12, three out of four consumed alcohol, one of every two smoked cigarettes, more than one in three used marijuana, one in nine used LSD and one in 11 used ecstasy.
      Teenage substance abuse has worsened in the last three to five years, said Richard Schmit, executive director of Friends of Bridge in Valley Stream, a drug prevention, treatment and counseling group that assists kids throughout Nassau County.
      "It's basically as bad as I've seen it," said Schmit. But he said he's not aware of drugs being used at school, largely because most high school campuses are open and students can go off grounds, so there's no need to take the chance of being caught with drugs at school.
      "Some parents are in denial," he said. "Some parents are verbal and they come out in the open and other parents are active themselves with alcohol, marijuana. It's hard to expect the kid not to do something you do."
      Other drug counselors agree parents and school officials must not deny that a drug problem exists, which is a first step toward a solution. "Nancy [Reagan] had the strategy to 'Just Say No.' And abstinence is the model that we've been practicing or teaching for 50, 60 years," Wilansky said. "The only strategy is an honest and unpolitical dialogue about the problem. ... But there's nothing that gives me a great deal of optimism. There's no magic bullet being invented. There's no political strategy that I hear about."
      Nomikos, of the LI alcohol and drug council, said hitting youths with drug education at a younger age may be the key. "I think programs have come and gone and nothing seems to be working and that's why we have to start very young. When I go into the high schools, the kids tell me, 'You're too late already, Eileen.'"
      She said drug counselors used to start talking to students first in the high school and then middle school. But starting this year, group counselors began working with kindergarten students, including giving them beginner's information on alcohol and drugs, in a "Smart Kids" program.

School-based drug prevention programs
      The schools are also taking a pro-active stance in educating students about the impact of drug abuse. A chapter of SADD, Students Against Drunk Driving, appears to have made its way into each school district. Also formed at many schools are peer mentoring programs, where older students, ages 17 and 18, are matched with incoming students, 14 and 15, to help ease the transition and give them positive influences to make better decisions.
      Michelle Reshard, social worker at Valley Stream Central High School, said the school is trying to organize a drug awareness weekend in 2001, where students hold a lock-in and speakers are invited to address them on substance abuse and self-esteem.
      "I get a sense they are listening and they hear best when they hear from their peers," she said. "Even though they are listening, it is very difficult when they are out there and they have to make the right choices."
      Abramson said East Rockaway has formed a group called Students Against Destructive Decisions, made up of students in grades 9-12 who volunteer to help make their fellow students aware of the consequences of negative choices like substance abuse, tobacco, alcohol and drunk driving. The school also operates a Student Peer Organization in which students in grades 11 and 12 volunteer to help with tobacco, alcohol and drug prevention by making presentations in the seventh-grade health classes. Schools also have formed drug-free student groups, with students signing contracts pledging to remain drug-free.
      Abramson said lessons in kindergarten focus on how to keep students' bodies healthy, including abstaining from drug use. "It does help to do things in elementary school. But I think that because middle school can be a pivotal age," Abramson said, "I don't think it's too late to do things in middle school. A lot of kids haven't tried a cigarette or drugs or alcohol by seventh grade."
      The school also runs a theme week each year and this year it's Substance Abuse Awareness, set for Feb. 5-9, for classes K-12, in which students will hear special presentations, and attend assemblies and workshops.
      "There is more research in drug prevention and we will be focusing more on research-based prevention programs [in 2001]," Abramson said.
      "We work on a lot of prevention, a lot of supportive services and it's preferable to start younger," said Amy Frawley, a social worker and substance abuse prevention specialist at Baldwin High School. She continually speaks to physical education and health classes, raising awareness "of what's actually out there."
      "We're not telling them anything new, but we want the information to be accurate," she said. "It's a little bit more aggressive than to 'Just Say No.' It's 'Just Say No and Here's Why.' No one really said why they should say no and what alternatives to drugs they can pursue."
      Nancy Schandler, a clinical social worker for Tempo Group, assigned to the Grand Avenue Middle School in Bellmore, agreed that prevention should start in kindergarten, with self-esteem issues, conflict resolution and decision-making. "So, by the time the child is 10 and faced with more significant decisions, they have a solid foundation of what's healthy and what's safe."
      She said 10 to 14 are the years when children will experiment and take risks. "If parents provide limits and are consistent, the chances that kids misuse [drugs] decrease."
      Dunn said there are many more school-based drug prevention programs now. His counseling center, LINK, used to have outreach workers in East Rockaway and Malverne, targeting the most at-risk kids and redirecting them. Now the schools are doing it more themselves, he said.


Schools open up publicly
      Slowly, schools appear to be addressing the problem