Residents converge on local teen drug use

More than 100 residents tied to the Crescenta Valley and the prevention of drug and alcohol use among local youth met during the CV Alliance’s quarterly meeting on Friday, where Glendale school officials and county health officials discussed ongoing efforts to keep teens from using controlled substances.

In recent years, Glendale Unified and the Glendale Police Department have been major players with the CV Alliance in informing local parents and community members about the trends of drug use among teens by relying on students’ own drug-use experiences and other issues such as dealing with depression.

Scott Anderle, assistant director of student services for Glendale Unified, said a recent survey showed one in three female Glendale students in the seventh and ninth grades described themselves as sad or depressed.

“The reality is, students just don’t show up at [Crescenta Valley High School] as ninth-graders and decide to start cutting themselves,” he said. “It really starts a lot earlier than that, and we want to try to have some impact on those developmental years, especially in middle schools since it’s such a big transition area.”

This year, a counselor working at Rosemont Middle School will train sixth-grade teachers to recognize students’ mental-health concerns, he added.

He also plans to propose a new antidrug curriculum called Project TND, short for “Towards No Drug Abuse,” that will replace outdated lessons that push Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” approach.

“When it comes to drugs and alcohol, there’s a reason why people use, and so let’s start looking into that — what’s going on to make me want to escape something?” Anderle said. “We’re looking at what we’re teaching. We’re saying…’Is it current?’ And if it’s not, we’re going to look at something different.”

By 2016, Wesley Ford, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Substance Abuse Prevention and Control, said he suspects a ballot measure will ask voters if they want to legalize marijuana.

“It probably has a high probability of passing,” Ford said. “So I’ve charged staff with what we will do going forward if that is to happen. How do we start to get [out] prevention messages? How do we start to deal with this issue?”

According to a survey filled out by seventh-graders in Glendale schools, 4% of them had used marijuana in their lifetime, while 14% said the drug was easy to get.

Meanwhile, 14% of Glendale seventh-graders had at least one alcoholic drink in their lifetime, and 6% reported they had a drink of alcohol within 20 days of taking the survey.

A total of 6% of seventh-graders said they were offered illegal drugs on school property.

In keeping adults clued into the latest trends, city spokesman Tom Lorenz passed around a carton of electronic cigarettes he picked up after a woman gave him a free coupon for them as he entered a Circle K store.

“Not only does it come with your electronic, e-cigarettes, but it comes with a USB device so when the battery runs low on it, you can plug into it and you can recharge the thing. Isn’t this cool for kids? Well, this is the product that’s available out there,” he said. “If you’ve never seen one, this is one of the things we’re working to prevent our kids to get their hands on.”