20pc high school students drink, smoke and do drugs during school hours
New York, Aug 23 (ANI)
Nearly one in five students do drugs, drink or smoke cigarettes during the school day, a new survey has revealed.
Kid said that marijuana was the drug easiest to buy on school grounds.
While the revelation that 17 percent of high school students may be half in the bag on any given day may come as a shock to some parents or teachers, it's old news to the 1,000 students surveyed by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
Some 86 percent told survey-takers that they were well aware their glassy-eyed classmates were stoned or drunk.
"It takes a teen to know what's going on in the teen world," the New York Daily News quoted Emily Feinstein, who directed the 17th annual survey, as saying.
Half of the students polled said they know who deals drugs at school - and where students can go nearby to get high.
Marijuana was the drug easiest to buy on school grounds, students said, followed by prescription drugs, cocaine and ecstasy.
The survey of 12- to 17-year-olds also found that seeing pictures on Facebook or MySpace of their pals partying made them want to get drunk or stoned themselves.
Some 75 percent said this kind of digital peer pressure is a major problem and 45 percent said they saw online photos of classmates drinking, doing drugs or even passing out.
These kids were four times likelier to have smoked pot, three times likelier to have used alchohol, and three times likelier to smoke cigarettes.
By contrast, kids who didn't see these images on social networking sites were less likely to drink, do drugs, or smoke, the survey found.