Student Drug Use Drops but Users of Cocaine Get Higher, Survey Finds

A survey of almost 400,000 junior high and high school students nationwide found that the percentage using drugs has dropped in the past two years, but those who use cocaine are getting higher.

“I’m discouraged that the levels of intoxication are increasing,” Thomas J. Gleaton Jr., president of National Parents’ Resource Institute for Drug Education, said Tuesday in announcing survey results.

Some Bombed in Junior High

The percentage of students in grades 9-12 who said they use cocaine dropped from 6.4% in 1986-87 to 4.6% in the 1988-89 school year. But those users who reported getting “very high” or “bombed/stoned” from the drug rose from 71.4% to 74.5% over the two-year period, the survey said.

In the junior high grades of 6-8, 1.7% of the students said they had used cocaine in the past year, a drop from 2.3% in 1986-87. But 68.2% of those users said they got “very high” or “bombed/stoned,” contrasted with 65.2% in the earlier survey.

The drop in the percentage of students who said they used cocaine “means the casual user is more careful, more frightened of the drug,” Gleaton said.

Although the use of beer, liquor, marijuana and cocaine showed declines from the 1986-87 survey for students in grades 6-12, levels of junior high students’ use of liquor and cocaine remained higher than they were in the 1984-85 survey.

The percentage of students in grades 6-8 who said they used liquor was 21.2% in 1984-85, peaked at 26.3% two years ago and dropped to 24.9% in the latest survey. The percentage who said they used cocaine was 1.3% four years ago, peaked at 2.3% two years ago and dropped to 1.7% in the new study.