STUDENTS HERE BUCK NATIONAL DRUG-USE TREND

Educators in the Cape Girardeau area say they haven't seen the notable increase in drug use among pre-high school children reported in a recent University of Michigan survey.

The survey released last week found marijuana use among eighth-graders has doubled since 1991 -- from 6.2 percent to 13 percent reported smoking marijuana during the previous 12 months -- and that one in four of today's eighth-graders has used an illegal drug -- a 10 percent increase from the previous year.

The researchers blamed the increase on more relaxed attitudes toward experimentation and abuse. Their drug questionnaire was answered by 52,000 eighth-, 10th- and 12-graders from 420 public and private schools.

No current local surveys are available, but in 1991 only 3 percent of seventh-graders in the Jackson Public Schools said they had smoked marijuana.

Dennis Parham, principal of Jackson Junior High School, doubts whether more Jackson students are smoking marijuana or using the various street drugs now.

"I don't think they're necessarily within the norm," he said of his students. "Overall, Jackson kids are not really into hard drugs. They're experimenting with alcohol."

Both the Jackson and Cape Girardeau schools are members of the Drug Free Schools and Communities Program, which provides grants to help schools combat substance abuse among students.

The schools are armed with an array of drug prevention, intervention and rehabilitation programs with names like Project Charlie, Quest, DARE, Hi Step and Just Say No clubs.

Parham doesn't concur with Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala's response to the new survey. She called a news conference to issue "a call to action."

"The federal government tries to get involved in things that are the responsibility of the parents," he said.

Most students who experiment with drugs are children who don't feel as if they belong, Parham said.

Children won't go far astray "if the parents are involved and know what they are doing and who they are hanging out with," Parham said.

Violence is now gaining on drugs as a concern in the schools, says Richard Bollwerk, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the Cape Girardeau Public Schools.

He echoed Parham's belief that alcohol remains a much more widespread problem locally than marijuana or street drugs.

"Our surveys show 95 percent have never used marijuana," Bollwerk said, referring to the 1991 survey of seventh-graders. "But 90 percent of the kids surveyed have had some experience in the use of alcohol."

The schools will be required to complete a new Drug Free Schools and Communities Program survey this year.

Bollwerk disputed the Michigan researchers' contention that the anti-drug message to students has been softened -- at least locally.

"Not in our schools," he said. "We haven't taken a more relaxed attitude on anything."

Bollwerk's son, Ryan, recently won a contest at L.J. Schultz School in which he designed an anti-drug T-shirt.

Mindy Hamlett, a special education teacher who directs the Schultz anti-drug team, does suspect marijuana use may be increasing among junior high-age students. She said she hears stories from seventh-graders about the peer pressure they face.

"They have to make a decision about whether or not to partake," Hamlett said.

Hamlett's principal, John Eck, questions whether drug use among pre-high school students is as widespread here as it is on the national level.

"If there is (marijuana use), it's minimal," he said.

But he fears the Just Say No anti-drug message of the 1980s might be losing its effectiveness.

"Kids are getting numb to it," Eck said. "They hear it all the time. It doesn't mean as much as it did back then."

The answer, he says, is "stronger families and better parenting."