The straight dope: The jury is in

The recent Santa Cruz County grand jury report, “Alcohol, a Drug of Choice for Scotts Valley Teens,” provides the proverbial good news-bad news picture. Well, perhaps OK news and bad news is a better summary.
Looking at data from the California Healthy Kids Survey, the grand jury cites alcohol use in the past 30 days by seventh-, ninth- and 11th-graders in Scotts Valley that is not significantly different from the figures gathered by Monitoring the Future, the largest and longest-running survey of drug use by youth in the United States.
While the two surveys look at different grade levels (the nationwide survey studies eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders), the percentage of teens using alcohol at each of those grade levels is not much different between the two studies. Having said that, it is not particularly reassuring that 38 percent of 11th-graders in Scotts Valley report having used alcohol in the previous 30 days, or that 42 percent of 12th-graders across the country report the same in the MTF survey.
Neither can we disregard the fact that the grand jury found that Scotts Valley’s rate of teen alcohol use “is among the highest in the county.”
But we can perhaps take as good news the fact that Scotts Valley teens are rather normal in their alcohol use when compared to all teens in the U.S., though it damns them with faint praise. It’s the clearly bad news part of the grand jury report that calls for attention and action.
In short, the grand jury found that the Scotts Valley Unified School District, while not responsible for solving the problem of teen drug use, has not effectively used — or in some cases used at all — resources that could address this problem. In one example, the grand jury points out that the district’s suspension-expulsion policy (a zero-tolerance approach) is ineffective as a primary intervention for student alcohol use. In other words, a student who violates the policy regarding alcohol use is suspended or expelled, but no intervention, counseling or referral takes place.
Solely punitive methods have never worked in responding to the use of alcohol and other drugs. Just look at our prison system and its recidivism: Locking up an addict in no way begins to address the whole of the problem. To send a student home — where alcohol is no doubt present, and where parents are probably not — is akin to having 12-step meetings in a bar. Furthermore, the student loses precious class time.
Other practices of school administrators are called into question. While “administrators at the high school review the CHKS findings . . . [they do] not make the information available to staff members who work closest to students.”
Why one would bother to review certain data and not provide it to those who could put it to best use is rather baffling.
For their part, district officials responded that the data in these surveys are unreliable because the students’ responses are tainted by the fact that they aren’t graded on their participation.
It is widely accepted in the field that drug users will underreport their use. While high school students conceivably could be bragging for the sake of confusing the adults, it is more likely that the responses regarding their use of alcohol are close enough to the truth to warrant careful attention and response.
But even were the statistics taken at face value, the district responded to the grand jury that teen alcohol use is a “community problem” and not that of the district. Apparently, district officials see themselves acting on some ethereal plane outside of the Scotts Valley community, not as players on a larger stage. Many teenagers spend more face time in school than they do with their parents and remain part of the community while doing so.
All of those working in our public school system deserve our support, as well as better salaries, more resources and decent facilities. But along with all that goes responsibility, especially on the part of the administrators and district officials.
The grand jury report lays out many possible solutions to deal with the problem of teen alcohol use in Scotts Valley. The community — parents, teachers, administrators, businesses and others — is responsible for putting those solutions into play.
William Brigham, M.S.W., M.A., of Scotts Valley is administrator of the National Football League Program for Substances of Abuse and father of five daughters. Contact him at [email protected].