Alcohol and marijuana use is more prevalent than the use of harmful legal products, such as over-the-counter medicines and inhalants used to get high, among the Wrangell students that participated in a survey late last year.
The student survey is part of the Harmful Legal Product Prevention Project (HLP) by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) and Alaska nonprofit Akeela. The surveys are being conducted in other rural communities throughout Alaska, and will help determine if the project’s adapted model for community prevention of HLPs is effective. Along with the student surveys, parent surveys are administered as part of the project and the availability of HLPs in schools and retail stores are also assessed in each community.
The preliminary findings from Wrangell’s student surveys conducted in winter of 2009 and 2011 were presented at the Feb. 20 school board meeting.
During the first round of surveys, fifth, sixth and seventh graders were asked questions about their usage of drugs — from alcohol and tobacco to inhalants and abuse of household products. That same group of Wrangell students were again given the survey two years later when they were seventh, eighth and ninth graders. Forty-nine students participated in 2009, and 42 participated in 2011.
Kristen Ogilvie, associate research scientist with PIRE in Anchorage who presented the preliminary findings to the Wrangell School Board last week, said according to national statistics, inhalant abuse peaks in eight grade.
“So our interest was in trying to see how that develops,” she said.
Substance abuse often has to do with what is socially available, Ogilvie said. For instance, 11 and 12 year olds don’t have as much access to alcohol as they have access to harmful legal products.
“You go to what is available,” Ogilvie said. “For kids of a certain age, these (harmful legal products) are more readily available.”
According to the preliminary findings of the 2011 surveys, two percent of those that participated said they had used prescription drugs in their lifetime to get high. No student said they had used over-the-counter medicines to get high. Two percent answered they had used household products, and two percent said they had used inhalants to get high.
The numbers were higher when it came to alcohol, tobacco and marijuana usage, according to the preliminary results from the seventh, eighth and ninth-graders surveyed late last year. Forty-three of those that participated in the survey said they had drunk alcohol in their lifetime. Ten percent said they had smoked cigarettes, and ten percent said they had used marijuana.
Those numbers are also higher than those from the 2009 surveys conducted. In 2009, out of the fifth, sixth and seventh graders who participated in the survey, 14 percent said they had drunk alcohol in their lifetime, four percent said they had smoked cigarettes and two percent said they had used marijuana in their lifetime.
A final student survey report should be available in the next coupe of weeks, Ogilvie said. Once that report is complete it will be given to the school board, she said, and then to the public. The final student survey report will also show how Wrangell compares to the other communities as far as drug usage and awareness.
The purpose of presenting the data to the school board last week was to garner community feedback that can be incorporated into a final report, Ogilvie said. That final report will include data from the other Alaska rural communities included in the HLP project and should be available in 2014.
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