NEW YORK -- As US teens head back to school, you may be surprised at how many are carrying a little something extra in their backpacks; drugs and alcohol.
Students should be focusing on reading, writing and arithmetic, but too many teens are drinking and smoking marijuana during school hours.
Joseph Califano and fellow researchers at Casa-Columbia in New York just released a survey of a thousand teenagers.
"It's alcohol and drugs that are putting the high in high school, not advanced education," says Califano.
Nearly every single one of them, 97%, said they have classmates who drink alcohol, use drugs or smoke cigarettes, and often while school is in session. And it's not just cigarettes that are being smoked in the boys’ room.
"It's likely that the overwhelming proportion of conduct that the kids are talking about is drinking alcohol and smoking pot," says Califano.
Over 40% of the surveyed kids said they know a classmate who sells drugs -- mostly marijuana. 52% said there's a particular spot on or near campus where students know they can go to get high.
"It's easy to do this on school grounds and near school grounds without getting caught," says Califano.
The problem is not limited to public schools. More than half of private school teens said drugs are in their hallways too. That’s a 50% increase from the year before.
The survey also explored "digital peer pressure" -- where kids see photos of classmates drinking alcohol or doing drugs on social networking websites.
Three-quarters agreed viewing them encouraged their peers to want to do the same thing.
(Information courtesy NBC News)
