By NEIL ZOLOT
NORTH READING — The 2023 Drug-Free Community Project Core Measurement Report will include additional survey questions about recently legalized or common activities such as gambling and use of nicotine pouches, which are similar to chewing tobacco.
This new information will give school and town entities a baseline of information on such activities by local students. “We’ll have some data related to those,” DFC Grant Director Amy Luckiewicz told the School Committee at its meeting Monday night.
“Nicotine has a very persistent marketing strategy,” she noted.
“I think it’s warranted to start a baseline,” Committee Chair Scott Buckley responded while noting the recent spate of commercials related to sports gambling.
The eight-minute survey is given to Middle and High School students for anonymous responses to questions about student perception of risk or harm related to substance use, and the rates of use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, vaping, and unnecessary use of prescription drugs. Parents can opt their children out of taking the survey and students can skip questions if they wish.
Survey response rate varies
In 2022, 157 ninth-graders took the survey, a 92.9% response rate, but that was much higher than in other grades. A total of 151 sixth-graders took the survey, yielding a 77.8% response rate, while 126 seventh-graders participated yielding a 72% response rate, but only 65.5% of eighth-graders participated (127 students), 63.3% of 10th-graders participated (81 students), 40.9% of 11th-graders participated (72 students) and 38.7% of 12th-graders participated (63 students).
Luckiewicz believes the survey should not be given near the date of a prom, which she said could affect numbers of users in the previous 30 days as students often drink more or experiment with other substances during prom season.
Information from the previous surveys completed in 2018-2022 – without data from 2020 due to the pandemic – indicates alcohol use fell from 16% of students to 11% although it had dropped to 9% in 2021.
Trends in usage of other substances were as follows:
• Tobacco use fell from 5% to 3%, although it rose from just under 3% in 2020 to 4% in 2021.
• Marijuana use fell from 15% to 7% in a gradual drop.
• Unnecessary use of prescription drugs fell from 4% to just under 3%.
• Vaping data started in 2019 when it was 11%, dropping to just over 6% in 2021 and rising closer to 7% in 2022.
“I was glad to see marijuana use go down because we targeted that,” Luckiewicz explained to the committee.
Although there is a perception that school bathrooms are the most common places for substance use, information gleaned from the survey responses indicate students use substances mostly at a friend’s house or their own homes, although there is some use on school grounds.
“We need to ask parents to keep an eye on things happening at home,” Luckiewicz said.
Trends generally below national averages
Substance use among North Reading students in the eighth, 10th and 12th grades is generally below national averages for alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, but there are exceptions. Comparing local use by teens to the 2021 University of Michigan National Institute on Drug Abuse “Monitoring the Future” study, 16.05% of North Reading’s 10th-graders reported alcohol use in the previous 30 days compared to 13.1% nationally. Additionally, 19.05% of local 12-graders reported alcohol use, compared to 25.8% nationally, while 2.4% of local eighth-graders reported alcohol use compared to 7.3% nationally.
On unnecessary use of prescription drugs, 3.17% of North Reading’s 12th-graders responding to the survey reported use compared to 2.1% nationally. Additionally, 2.56% of eighth-graders and 2.47% of 10th-graders reported use of prescription drugs but the University of Michigan study did not have national data available in this category for those two grades.
When it comes to tobacco use, North Reading students reported well below national averages as 1.6% of local eighth-graders reported use in the past 30 days compared to 9.4% nationally; 2.47% of 10th-graders reported use compared to 15.7% nationally and 9.52% of local 12th-graders reported use, compared to 24.6% nationally.
Similarly, with regard to marijuana use, local students across the three age groups self-reported usage in the previous 30 days below national averages, with 3.2% of local eighth-graders reporting use compared to 4.1% nationally; 8.75% of local 10th-graders compared to 10.1% nationally and 11.11% of local 12th-graders compared to 19.5% nationally.
Age of First Use
The category of self-identifying Age of First Use data was younger in most cases from 2019-2022. Marijuana age of first use fell from 16 to 15 between 2019 and 2022 with nicotine vaping dropping from 15 to 14, tobacco from 17 to 16 and the unnecessary use of prescription drugs dropped from 15 to 14 (however, this was an improvement over 2021 when the self-reported mean age of first use was “10 or younger” in this category).
First age of use for both alcohol and non-nicotine vaping remained stable at 15 from 2019-2022, while the first age of use for vaping marijuana rose from 15 to 16. “We’d like those ages to be 26, the youngest age our brains stop developing!” Luckiewicz said.
Perhaps with that in mind, anti-vaping curricula will be introduced to fifth-graders. “As we see this data, we need to intervene at younger ages,” Luckiewicz believes. “I’ll be watching the vaping data very closely.”
School Committee member Dyana Boutwell asked if use of social media might be part of future surveys, but Luckiewicz responded even though that was a good idea the DCF grant didn’t cover it.
The complete report is available for review by the public on the Community Impact Team (CIT) page on the town’s website at: northreadingma.gov/CIT.
Monday’s meeting also included a second Reading of the Animals in School policy and a review of the preliminary FY24 school budget.
EDITOR’S NOTE: See today’s Around the Schoolyard column authored by Michael Connelly, the School Department’s assistant superintendent of finance and operations, for the most recent budget priorities being proposed by the district.