by John Castelluccio
PEABODY – As it turns out, Peabody teens are drinking far less than they think, according to the results of surveys given to students last February.
Those results show that 59 percent of high school students polled don’t drink regularly while 91 percent of middle school students also said they didn’t take a swig in the last 30 days. The perception is much higher.
Thirty-five percent of Higgins Middle School students believe their peers drink, while 90 percent of high school students say the same about their peers. Students offered similar answers in regard to marijuana use. Eighty-seven percent of the student body at the Higgins was surveyed and 82 percent of Peabody Veterans Memorial High School pupils – a total of 2,800 Peabody kids. Only 42 Higgins students and 18 high school students opted out of the survey, which included a broad range of questions, from substance use to bullying, exercise and weight control.
Sara Grinnell, executive director of the Health Peabody Collaborative, reported those heartening statistics to the School Committee on Jan. 26.
She believes the gap between perception and reality is perpetuated largely by students who try to project a false persona of themselves to their peers.
“The misperception is huge. That just perpetuates the use. They’re bombarded with media all day…it’s not cool to say you didn’t drink over the weekend,” Grinnell said.
The immediate value of the new data is to debunk an oft-heard explanation parents hear from their teens. “It’s a tool for parents to say, ‘No, everyone else isn’t doing it,” Grinnell said.
Grinnell hopes that spreading the message throughout the community will help decrease use even further.
She’s confident in the accuracy of the results because students were consistent in how they answered throughout the survey and more so, because it matches fairly closely with statewide results – it would take a lot of orchestrated lying to achieve that.
The results would seem to indicate a marked improvement in the number of local teens abusing alcohol and drugs from a few years ago. Back then Peabody teens engaging in binge drinking were being hospitalized at double and quadruple the rates of the state average.
Grinnell said city leadership has been very proactive in discouraging that behavior with numerous community forums on the dangers of substance abuse and concerted educational efforts in the schools. She added that the community has come a long way from the environment painted in Sports Illustrated articles.
The Healthy Peabody Collaborative, a local coalition of community stakeholders, was one endeavor that began two years ago with the sole intent of discouraging teens from substance abuse and to change the community environment to make it harder for teens to get their hands on alcohol or drugs.
Despite the survey numbers, that still leaves a sizeable population of high school students who are drinking and that’s why the coalition is continuing to team up with law enforcement agencies, public access TV, the library and the Boys & Girls Club to talk directly with teens about life choices and the reality of substance abuse.
Grinnell has worked on a drug curriculum with the Essex County Sheriff’s Department at the high school and then connected with the library and the Boys & Girls Club to bring similar programming into non-school settings on a wide range of related topics.
Thanks to a grant by the local coalition, Bishop Fenwick students got the opportunity to attend the presentation “To Write Love on Her Arms” at UMass Lowell last month. The show focuses on depression and self-abusive behaviors among adolescents, while informing teens about available resources to help friends and family.
As for the survey results, Mayor Michael Bonfanti is putting together a special committee to review the data in further detail. Grinnell also presented some recommendations, such as increasing outreach to parents of younger children and local businesses and undertaking some curriculum changes for students transitioning from middle to high school.
School Committee members, glad to hear the survey results, asked for the news to be shared with students right away.
“We need to let them know we’re proud of them for it,” said Beverly Griffin Dunne.
Superintendent of Schools Milton Burnett said health teachers will include some of the results in their classes.
“This is really reality, that the majority [of students] are living a healthy lifestyle,” Burnett said.
