The Communities That Care Coalition, a local group working to address drug, alcohol and tobacco use among area youth, presented its annual Community Needs Assessment report at Greenfield High School Thursday.
Jeanette Voas, the coalition’s Regional School Health Task Force coordinator, said past-month use of marijuana has dropped since 2003 and has essentially flatlined for the past decade or so, but it’s beginning to rise again as students begin to consider the substance less risky.
A statewide ballot initiative in November’s election will ask the public whether the marijuana should be legalized recreationally, as has been done in Colorado, Oregon, Alaska and Washington. It’s currently decriminalized in the state and available legally for medicinal use only in Massachusetts.
Alcohol use has seen a substantial decrease, with a slight increase in the number of students who perceive it as a dangerous activity. Cigarette smoking has also decreased, but use of electronic cigarettes has become more popular.
Prescription painkiller abuse is up, in keeping with the recent trends toward more opioid abuse, as is heroin use. The latter, however, is quite rare, with just 1 or 2 percent of students reporting using the drug.
“We don’t see evidence in the high school of much heroin use,” she said, though she noted it has become much more common between the ages of 19 and 24, once students have graduated.
Kat Allen, one of the coalition’s co-chairs, said the report uses survey data collected since 2003 and more recent interviews to provide a qualitative look into the factors leading to substance abuse among youth between the age of 14 and 23.
“We realized the surveys didn’t give us that rich depth of information, so we conducted these interviews with the stakeholders,” said Voas.
Much of the information was drawn from interviews with 29 stakeholders from law enforcement, the schools and community service organizations, three parent focus groups and six focus groups that included 40 local young people.
Voas noted the survey results show that perceptions held among local youth about how many of their peers smoke marijuana don’t exactly match up with reality. Though 25 percent of 10th-grade students believed more than three-quarters of their classmates used the drug in the last month, the data shows that only a quarter actually did.
“That’s not that surprising,” she said. “Those of us in this business know there’s a gap between reality and perception. Even if you double that, we still have all these people imagining that it’s higher.”
“This data is all for us to ingest and see how it informs our strategic plan,” said Allen. The report will be used by the coalition’s subgroups to that end, she said.
“It’s a deeper look at the community perceptions, why people are using,” said co-chair Lev Ben Ezra.
“You can’t get that from just a survey. Being able to get this will really help us formulate discussion about risks and strategies going forward.”
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