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Date: 7/5/2023
WEST SPRINGFIELD — Smoking, vaping, drinking alcohol and using marijuana showed a mostly downward trend among this year’s high school graduates, but substance use is rebounding among eighth graders, a team of high schoolers reported this spring.
And “there’s a bunch of risk factors we have that are higher than the national average,” high school student Charles Finn told the West Springfield School Committee on May 9.
Finn and other student members of the CARE Coalition — Collaborative Accountability Reaches Everyone — said their survey shows West Springfield teens worry about academic failure and have a low commitment to school at higher rates than the national average.
CARE Coalition had 659 responses to its survey among West Springfield eighth, 10th and 12th graders in the 2022-23 school year. The survey was administered in class, though participation was voluntary. It includes features meant to weed out lying or unserious respondents, such as questions about use of made-up drugs.
Survey findings include about 44% of West Springfield students in all three surveyed grades reporting that they feel they are failing academically, versus the national average among schools that administer this survey of 31.7%. West Springfield eighth, 10th and 12th graders report a low commitment to school at a rate of 64.2%, 52.8% and 57.2%, respectively, compared with just 47.6% for the national average. They also reported symptoms of depression at a rate of 48.9%, versus 40.8% nationally.
“These are all self-reported data,” said Finn. “When we address that, hopefully we can help lower use rates” of controlled substances.
Local teens are well below national averages in many other “risk factors” for drug and alcohol use, such as perceived availability of drugs, friends’ and sibilings’ use of drugs, and parents or selves having a favorable attitude toward drug use, the survey found.
The survey asked respondents if they had used alcohol, cigarettes, e-cigarettes or marijuana over the 30 days before they took the survey. For eighth graders, use rates were 4.3%, 1.3%, 5.2% and 4.8%, respectively, all of which are increases from the survey responses collected in 2021. Cigarette use is also higher than recorded in 2019, and marijuana use has almost returned to its 2019 level of 5.8%. For drinking and vaping, the 2023 use rates still represent a large decline from 2019.
As in eighth grade, only about 1% of students in 10th and 12th grades reported smoking cigarettes recently. Unlike eighth grade, drinking, vaping and marijuana use showed downward trends with no rebound at the high school level, with 12.2% of sophomores drinking (down from 22.6% in 2019), 7.8% vaping (down from 24.7%) and 6.4% using marijuana (down from 15.7%); and among seniors, 21.3% drinking (down from 34.8%), 14.2% vaping (down from 25.6%) and a slight decline in marijuana use, 18.1% in 2023 versus 19.7% four years ago.
Finn presented the survey findings along with fellow CARE Coalition members Payton Colbert and Franza Mazimpaka. All three will be seniors at West Springfield High School in 2023-24. Finn and Colbert attended a national leadership training conference for Communities Against Drugs Coalitions of America in Florida last summer, and this month plan to attend another one in Texas.
Colbert said she hopes to pick up strategies for connecting with high schoolers about the risks of drug and alcohol abuse. She said she currently finds it easier to speak with middle schoolers.
“When they’re younger, they’re definitely more receptive to us,” she said, attributing it to middle schoolers looking up to older teens. “Once you’re in high school, it’s kind of hard, especially coming from another high schooler, to reach that point.”
The survey pointed out some factors that Finn said will influence CARE Coalition’s initiatives in the coming year. Asked where they consume alcohol, 58.1% of drinkers among high school seniors said it was at home, with their parents’ permission, and the third-highest response was at someone else’s home, with that person’s parents’ permission. Asked where they got alcohol, the top three responses were at a party, from an adult they know, and from home with parents’ permission.
Communicating with parents “has been put on our radar after we saw how many kids are using alcohol at home with their parents’ permission,” Finn told the School Committee. He said the coalition also plans to recruit more student members and increase its peer-to-peer education efforts.
“The more kids that know, the better,” he said.