How does substance abuse affect schools?

Substance Abuse Prevalence

According to findings made by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2008, children in the United States begin to experiment with drugs and alcohol as early as age twelve. Marijuana, cocaine, and opiates are among the most commonly used drugs by middle and high school students.

Experimental or recreational drug and alcohol use has long been considered a cultural rite of passage or inevitable societal precursor to adulthood in the United States. The continued prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse among young children and teenagers, however, has long been considered developmentally problematic and wrought with potential negative long-term consequences.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reported in November 2014 that of the 2.4 million people who started using marijuana in the past year, 78 percent were aged twelve to twenty. NIDA also reported that in 2014 11.7 percent of eighth graders said they had used marijuana within the past year and 6.5 used it currently; 27.3 percent of American tenth graders students had used marijuana in the past year and 16.6 percent were current users; 35.1 percent of twelfth graders had used marijuana within the past year and 21.2 percent were current users. Alcohol use by young adults ages twelve to twenty declined from 28.8 percent in 2002 to 22.7 percent in 2013. Use of the psychoactive drug ecstasy rose 3 percent among eighth grade students between 2009 and 2010. Nonmedical use of prescription drugs such as OxyContin, Vicodin, and Adderall and of over-the-counter cough and cold medicines also has risen significantly since about the year 2000, according to NIDA studies.

Causes

Schools and their surrounding communities are often criticized when the potential causes of teenage substance abuse are examined by parents, medical professionals, and sociologists. This is to be expected because of the long tradition of collecting drug use data through in-school surveys, coupled with positive and negative peer influences.

Despite the long association between drug use and educational institutions, contemporary data on the influences that lead to substance abuse among school children illustrate that the reasons may be far more personal and individualized. Researchers have also begun to deconstruct many long-held truisms surrounding the connection between substance abuse and educational performance to unveil a more complex relationship.

According to a leading drug-abuse prevention resource, The Partnership at Drugfree.org, the outside influences affecting teenage drug and alcohol abuse are many, and they do not stop at peer pressure. Popular media and adult influences are two major factors in a teen’s decision to experiment with drugs and alcohol. Drug and alcohol abuse has proven to be higher among groups of students who have more exposure to the widespread use of drugs and alcohol in R-rated films, according to DrugFree.org research.

The notion that drug and alcohol use is an expected, temporary, and easily escapable episode in the lives of American teenagers has been trumpeted in American film, music, and literature for decades. A landmark 1999 study by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) showed that of two hundred contemporary films surveyed, 93 percent depicted alcohol use and 51 percent depicted marijuana use.

Frequent exposure to drugs and alcohol and lax attitudes on the use of such substances by parental figures, older siblings, and other family members also influence teenagers’ decisions to abuse substances. Familial influence runs parallel to the misinformation perpetuated through society about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse. Despite decades of scientific evidence to the contrary, many American teenagers simply do not regard short-term or occasional substance abuse as dangerous or wrought with negative long-term consequences.

While researchers have often noted the use of illicit substances as an act of teenage rebellion, new findings also attribute boredom and a search for instant gratification as potential influences. Similarly, many children revert to the use and abuse of illicit substances simply to find common ground with their peers outside institutionalized or supervised environments.

Long-Term Effects

Teenage substance abuse has both short- and long-term negative consequences. The physiological and mental health consequences of substance abuse are particularly harmful to young people, negatively affecting concentration, learning, and social development. Studies have long shown that substance abuse can lead to truancy and legal problems, which hamper educational progress.

Data from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, however, indicate that not all young people who partake in substance abuse have extended absences from school or serious legal consequences. While many students prone to substance abuse remain physically present in the classroom, their valuation of and commitment to education can often wane. Such students simply go through the motions of participation, which results in underachievement and underappreciation of academic development.

Depression, apathy, and psychosocial dysfunctions are the most common problems associated with alcohol abuse among young people and adolescents. The US Department of Health and Human Services reports that alcohol is a major contributor to fatal injury, which is the leading cause of death for Americans younger than age twenty-one years. Adulthood alcohol dependence is five times more likely in persons who report that their first use of alcohol was before the age of fifteen years.

Similarly, teenage abuse of illicit drugs causes considerable damage to a person’s ability to successfully transition to adulthood. Symptoms include psychosomatic impairment such as stress disorders, impaired romantic attachments, and improper or unbalanced emotional functioning. Such impairments can lead to difficulty in building interpersonal and professional relationships.

Significant teenage drug abuse, namely the type that occurs with a frequency beyond the norms of occasional experimentation, can set the stage for difficulties in social-psychological functioning in adulthood. These malfunctions include poor impulse control; defiance toward social, personal, and professional expectations; and introversion and depression.

Methods of Prevention

Since the mid-twentieth century, a number of programs have attempted to educate youth about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse. Such programs have been designed at the local, state, and federal level and have had varying degrees of success.

Former US first lady Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No campaign was one of the first antidrug campaigns in the United States at the nationwide level. The program led to the founding of more than ten thousand Just Say No clubs nationwide. Cocaine use by high school seniors dropped to decade-low rates during the campaign’s height in the mid-1980s. The effectiveness of the campaign, however, dwindled in the years after the Reagan Administration.

Los Angeles Police Department chief Daryl F. Gates initiated the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program in California schools in 1983. The program grew throughout the 1980s and early 1990s to become the most widely implemented youth substance-abuse prevention program in US history. However, D.A.R.E.’s enormous popularity ultimately proved overblown. By 2001 the program’s ineffectiveness in preventing teenage substance abuse led US surgeon general David Satcher to deem the program a failure, and all federal support for the program was ended.

The failure of school-based campaigns has given rise to new strategies to combat school-age substance abuse among American youth. Organizations such as The Partnership at Drugfree.org and the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign have designed programs aimed at altering individual decision-making at the home level.

The ONDCP’s Above the Influence campaign has begun to show success, according to sociological studies. A 2011 study in the journal Prevention Science showed that students exposed to the advertising-style Above the Influence campaign were less likely to begin recreational marijuana use than those who had not seen the campaign’s message.

It remains the hope of substance-abuse professionals and contemporary antidrug programs that parents who have experienced the internal and external pressures to experiment with drugs and alcohol during adolescence will act as a trusted resource to their own children. Parents can do this by presenting to their teen children the alternatives and by discussing the numerous potential long-term consequences of substance use and abuse.

Bibliography

Bachman, Jerald, et al. The Education-Drug Use Connection: How Successes and Failures in School Relate to Adolescent Smoking, Drinking, Drug Use, and Delinquency. New York: Erlbaum, 2008. Print.

Bonnie, E. D. Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility. Washington, DC: National Academies, 2004. Print.

Cohen, Donald. Developmental Psychopathology, Risk, Disorder, and Adaptation. Indianapolis: Wiley, 2006. Print.

Franklin, Cynthia, Mary Beth Harris, and Paula Allen-Meares, eds. The School Services Sourcebook : A Guide for School-Based Professionals. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.

Hanson, Glen R., Peter J. Venturelli, and Annette E. Fleckenstein. Drugs and Society. 11th ed. Sudbury: Jones, 2012. Print.

United States. Natl. Inst. on Drug Abuse. “Marijuana Use and Educational Outcomes” Natl. Inst. on Drug Abuse. NIH, Nov. 2014. Web. 30 Oct. 2015.

United States. Natl. Inst. on Drug Abuse. “What Is the Scope of Marijuana Use in the United States?” Natl. Inst. on Drug Abuse. NIH, Sept. 2015. Web. 30 Oct. 2015.