Cindy West
The Gadsden Times

Teenagers got addicted at young age

Jodi is not yet 18. She will spend the rest of her life avoiding drugs, avoiding people who use drugs, and even be wary of drinking a beer at a party because she's afraid that will lead her to using drugs again.

"I still have that craving when I talk about it," she said. Like many addicts, she started early. She tried alcohol at 12, marijuana and cocaine at 13 and then moved on to acid. "Acid would make me be in a whole 'nother world," she said. "Ecstasy would make me love everybody."

About a year ago, a few days before she turned 17, she moved to Marshall County to live with her father and try to get away from cocaine. A month later she discovered crystal meth. "I started craving it after the first time I used it."

On probation for assaulting a family member in Hoover, she didn't get in trouble in Marshall County until December, when she failed a drug test. After 42 days of drug rehab, she believes she is different.

"These people have changed my life," she said of the Marshall County Juvenile Probation Office.

Parents who think their children are too young to think about using drugs might be startled by information brought to light by school drug surveys.

Not all school systems conduct drug surveys. Supervisors at the Etowah County, Attalla city and Fort Payne city school systems said that they don't survey students for drug use.

The Gadsden city system doesn't survey its students about drug use, either. "That possibly will change in the future," said Sandra Graham, director of student services for Gadsden city schools. "That is something we've been talking about in meetings recently."

Etowah, DeKalb and Marshall counties participated in the statewide youth survey for the state Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. Drugs are only one of the topics covered by that survey, which ranks counties according to their students' perceived risks of drug use, social skills, family attachment, availability of drugs and handguns, poor discipline and other criteria.

The table accompanying this story shows the ranks of Etowah, Marshall and DeKalb counties on risk and protective factors. For the risk factor shown, a rank of 1 indicates the top rank on risk factors. The lower the risk factor number, the more risk the county is experiencing relative to other counties. For protective factors, a rank of 1 indicates the top rank for protection. The lower the protective factor number, the more protection the county is experiencing relative to other counties.

Etowah County is ranked fifth for the risk factor of peer-individual perceived risks of drug use among the 42 counties that participated. On the other hand, Etowah County ranks in the top half of counties in protective factors, meaning that the county has more protection than at least half the counties surveyed, at least in the areas of the community's perceived availability of drugs and handguns, favorable attitudes toward drug use and friends' use of drugs.

Drug surveys have been conducted in the Cherokee County, Marshall County and Albertville City school systems.

Cherokee County
Two percent of the fourth-graders in the Cherokee County school system reported drinking beer, according to a PRIDE survey taken last year. PRIDE - Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education - is a nationwide organization devoted to drug- and violence-free youth that generates student drug use and violence questionnaires.

Jayne Davis, federal programs coordinator for Cherokee County schools, said 1.3 percent of those fourth-graders said they had used cigarettes.

"Among Cherokee County students in grades four through six, 14.6 percent may use, will use or have used alcohol, and 1.3 percent of sixth-graders say they will use marijuana in the future," Davis said in a press release.

Davis said that 127 ninth-graders were surveyed in the Cherokee County system. Those who said they used drugs and alcohol said they usually did so at nights and on weekends. Few said they used them during school hours.

"The results of our survey indicate that we have a community drug problem in Cherokee County, not just a school drug problem," Davis said.

Marijuana use was reported by 11.9 percent of students in the ninth grade, and 4.8 percent said they had used cocaine in the previous year.

More than 42 percent of ninth-graders said they drank beer in the past year. Thirty-one percent said they drank liquor and 37.3 percent drank wine coolers during that period.

Marshall County
A survey of ninth- through 12th-graders in the Marshall County school system in April and May showed that 66 percent had tried cigarettes and 34 percent had smoked in the past month.

Almost 17 percent of those who had bought cigarettes recently said they were not asked to show proof of age to do so. Forty-one percent of the smokers said they have tried to quit. Twenty percent of those responding said they had tried chewing tobacco or snuff in the last month.

One-third of high-schoolers said they had drunk alcohol in the last 30 days. Sixty-four percent of the students surveyed said they took their first drink when they were 16 years old or younger, with 26 percent first sipping at the age of 12 or younger. Almost 23 percent said they had drunk alcohol on school property during the previous month.

Seventy-one percent of those surveyed said they had never tried marijuana. Of the rest, 14 percent tried it at age 13 or 14, and 13 percent tried it at 12 years old or younger.

Nine percent of the students said they had used some form of cocaine during their lifetime. Five percent of those tried it at 13 or 14 years of age, and 4 percent tried it at 15 or 16.

Sniffing glue or huffing - breathing aerosol sprays to get high -- had been tried by 14.5 percent of the students. Six percent had taken steroids without a doctor's prescription, and 12 percent said they had taken other types of illegal drugs, such as ecstasy, speed, heroin or LSD. Two percent of the students said they had used a needle to inject themselves with illegal drugs.

As a whole, middle school students in the Marshall County system did not report as much drug usage as high-schoolers. A survey of fifth- through eighth-graders showed that 11 percent had smoked during the previous 30 days. Six percent said they bought cigarettes in a store, and 2 percent said they asked someone else to buy them. Of those who bought their own, 3.7 percent said they were not asked to show proof of age.

More than half the middle school students said they have never had a drink of alcohol for other than religious reasons. Thirty percent said they had their first drink of alcohol at 11 years or younger, and 13 percent said they had their first drink at 12 or 13 years.

Nine percent of middle-schoolers said they have tried marijuana, and 5 percent said they had tried cocaine. Nine percent had sniffed glue or aerosol sprays, 4 percent said they have used steroids and 2 percent said they had injected illegal drugs into their bodies.

Albertville City
Albertville's survey, conducted around the middle of the last school year, didn't ask students how often they used drugs; rather, it asked students, teachers and parents to rate the significance of certain problems.

"Remember, these are simply perceptions," Albertville Superintendent of Education Rob Sparkman said. "This is not based on actual events."

At Albertville High School, two-thirds of faculty said alcohol was a large problem, to which less than half of the parents and students agreed.

More than 60 percent of faculty said tobacco was a large problem at the school, while 57.4 percent of parents and 47.4 percent of students thought so.

"I think the survey summary gives an overall perception ... that alcohol and tobacco use are perceived to be more prevalent than illegal drug use," Sparkman said. "Ratings of illegal drugs appear to place marijuana and crystal meth as more prevalent." Less than one-fifth of students, about one-quarter of the parents and less than one-third of faculty felt marijuana to be a large problem at the high school.

Crystal methamphetamine is apparently not believed to be a big problem at the middle school or high school. While 27.3 percent of high-school faculty felt crystal meth was a large problem, only 19 percent of parents and about 10 percent of students felt the same. Roughly a third of each group felt that crystal represented a small problem at the high school.

At Alabama Avenue Middle School, 55.3 percent of faculty thought there was a small problem with alcohol at the school, while almost 74 percent of students and 60 percent of parents felt that alcohol was not a problem.

Half the middle-school faculty believe the tobacco problem to be of small significance, while almost 59 percent of students and 41 percent of parents feel there is no problem with tobacco at that school.

At both the middle school and high school, the percentage of faculty who believed particular drugs to be a large problem was greater than the percentage of students and parents who felt the same way. The only exceptions were ecstasy and prescription drugs.

Only 6 percent of high-school faculty felt ecstasy was a large problem, while almost 15 percent of parents and 9 percent of students felt it was.