I’m not denying that high schoolers everywhere use or experiment with recreational substances. I was struck, though, by a drug educator who said that at every school she visited, the percentage of kids who reported having tried/used drugs was always significantly lower than the percentage of classmates students assumed had used. Not sure if this is bravado (kids reports experiences they didn’t have) or a kind of fear of peer pressure (or a sense that it is everywherewhen it is not), but this interested me.
She also found that in most schools that hired her, the % of users was pretty close. There are a lot of assumptions about how drug and alcohol use differ from school to school, but she found that few were actually especially druggy or pure.
I’m going to be an outlier and say that this concerns me.
Drug and alcohol use will happen at most high schools. Even for schools that try to enforce it, it’s whack-a-mole… they can’t monitor what happens in every dorm room every night. And as students get older, they’re often living in smaller, less supervised cohorts. Kids figure out who to trust, who to invite, and the patterns of supervision so they can get away with it.
IMO it takes a pretty egregiously lenient environment for a freshman at their very first school-sponsored party to be aware of multiple cases of drug and alcohol abuse. This shows, to me, that the students aren’t worried at all about any repercussions. I think I’m a fairly lenient parent with a decent amount of common sense about the reality of teen life, and my DD has told me the spot on her campus where kids go to smoke pot, and has told me about a few cases of drug and alcohol use she’s seen, so I am fully aware that it exists. But I would be concerned about this environment.
Its Spring Break time and our first year of boarding school - i did ask this question of my 2 boarders who said "yeah of course there is X and Y at school " - sometimes/more often brought in by day students or parties at day student homes (eek!)
and every year apparently - there are kids expelled for being caught with contraband in their rooms. and no these are not surprise searches for all students but targeted searches of one person’s belongings/side of the room so there is either a strong suspicion for some reason or an anonymous tip
that being said - of course this isnt reported to the rest of us parents in any way formally from the school. should there be??? the schools are small enough that when kids leave mid stream - everyone knows and generally speaking everyone knows why too