■ 2-year state report finds alcohol, tobacco use drops in Benicia
JANICE ADAMS. File photo
By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor
While overall alcohol and tobacco use is down in Benicia grades seven, nine and 11 and fighting has decreased as well, marijuana use has seen an uptick, according to the recently released California Healthy Kids Survey.
Superintendent Janice Adams reported on the findings of the statewide report, which is released every two years, before the Benicia Unified School District Board of Trustees on Thursday. “You’ve got a very complex report,” she said. “When you start looking at it, there’s a wealth of information.”
The survey covers drug, alcohol, and tobacco use, asking whether students have used any of these in the past 30 days, and such attributes as perceived safety on school campuses.
It also covers “things that we call resiliency,” Adams said, “things that students have inside, internally, that help them make good decisions, resist peer pressure.”
Adams said students continue to do well in having those positive attributes. “The highest one is that they believe in Benicia — students believe that teachers have high expectations of them. They’re pretty comfortable that their teachers expect them to do well and to succeed,” she said.
Students also feel that they have positive relationships with caring results, she said.
But in a disappointing result, students said they felt opportunities for meaningful participation were often lacking. Only between 11 percent and 17 percent of students in the three grades reported this as a high area.
“That was a disappointing percentage,” Adams said. “It says that kids don’t feel that school is perhaps as engaging as it could be.”
Safety is another measure of the annual report. According to the survey, the percentage of Benicia seventh graders afraid of being beaten up in school has gone down since 2010 from 38 to 24 percent; in ninth grade from 23 to 19 percent; and in 11th grade from 13 to 12 percent.
Alcohol and tobacco use, meanwhile, have decreased slightly. Among seventh graders, the use of tobacco decreased from 5 to 4 percent; in ninth grade from 10 to 6 percent; and in 11th grade from 16 to 12 percent.
An exception, Adams said, is Liberty High School. “They have an extremely high percentage of students at Liberty High School who smoke cigarettes,” she said.
Alcohol use among seventh graders decreased from 12 to 11 percent; stayed even at 17 percent for ninth graders; and decreased from 32 to 26 percent among 11th graders.
“The one that we really like to see that has gone down is binge drinking,” Adams said. Defined as consuming five or more alcoholic drinks in a couple hours, the percentage of those who claim to have engaged in binge drinking stayed at 5 percent in seventh graders but went down from 11 to 9 percent in ninth graders and from 22 to 17 percent in 11th graders.
“Students being involved in less high-risk behaviors, we see some positive trends,” said Adams.
However, in that two-year span, the survey recorded a rise in marijuana use, something Adams found troubling.
“It seems as though marijuana has become the drug that students are using in our high school,” she said. “Less students are drinking, but … it’s like the same amount of kids are using a substance but they’re more using marijuana and less are using alcohol.”
The survey found that marijuana use had increased from 6 to 8 percent among seventh graders and from 11 to 15 percent among ninth graders. It had, however, decreased from 26 to 23 percent among 11th graders.
“By 11th grade, 56 percent of students reported using marijuana,” Adams said. “Students report that it’s extremely easy to get marijuana.”
At Thursday’s meeting, Adams pointed out that there were several police officers in the room. “They were talking about marijuana being much easier to obtain than it was at one point in time. They’re not surprised by that,” she said. “We’re very concerned that any student is using. Particularly alarming are students who are coming to school under the influence.
“I’m going to say this for the young people in the audience. Your teenage brains are still developing. Those synapses are still growing, and your chemistry is not all the way developed. So alcohol has a different impact on a 15-year-old than it does a 30-year-old,” Adams said.
“I think we need to make sure that kids understand that because we want everyone to grow up and reach their fullest potential.”
Read more about the California Healthy Kids Survey at http://chks.wested.org/.
Also Thursday, the board again addressed the issue of the fifth-grade Family Life Instruction curriculum. Adams said dozens of parents attended a meeting earlier in the week and viewed a set of DVDs under consideration for use in the sex education course.
“We did a better job of outreach,” Adams said. “We had 36 parents come to hear about our Family Life program and to look at the videos.”
However, Adams requested approval for only one of the DVDs, “We’re Just Around The Corner,” instead of all three. “It is the DVD that the fifth-grade teachers recommended above the rest. So we decided to stick with one.”
Board members who were present unanimously approved the DVD. Trustee Dana Dean was not present.
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So what they are saying is that students are using more of the one still illegal drug. The one that is by every single valid scientific measure far less dangerous that both alcohol and nicotine. This is not great, but people need to read this without any spin. Students are using less dangerous drugs and overall using drugs less. Yes less, while pot use went up slightly it was at the expense of the use of two more frequently used and more dangerous drugs. Another words, fewer people over all used drugs but those that did used pot. The solution here is not attempts at fear mongering and spin. The solution is to use the same programs that have clearly worked for both tobacco and alcohol on marijuana keeping in mind that pot simply does not impact health as severely. I do not want students high but a student high on pot is far less risky to me that one who is drunk or as devastating as one dying of lung cancer.
“They were talking about marijuana being much easier to obtain than it was at one point in time.” Nonsense!