Substance use rates down among local high school students

Reductions in alcohol and tobacco use

By Katherine Nettles 

During the Gunnison Watershed School District board meeting on May 6, board members heard an update on the latest findings around youth and substance use in the valley. According to data collected from surveys of students across the school district and compared with state and regional data, Gunnison County has work to do in reducing nicotine use among middle and high school students but numbers for those using alcohol, tobacco and harder drugs have decreased in recent years.

Gunnison County Substance Abuse Prevention Project (GCSAPP) representatives  shared data collected through a 2023 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey last November and presented it to the school board in a school and community report. 

The Colorado School of Public Health does the data analysis for the school district, and John Powell, the data coordinator for Gunnison County Juvenile Services helps translate that data.

Powell presented the survey data, which included 457 responses from high school students and about 400 from middle schoolers across the Gunnison Watershed School District. 

High schoolers’ response rate to the survey was 74%, and the middle school rate was 83%. Among respondents, high schoolers were 44% female, 68% white, 17% Hispanic/LatinX, 1% black, 9% multiracial, 88% heterosexual, 3% bisexual, 5% gay and 95% cisgender. 

Powell and Emily Mirza, GCSAPP program manager, described some key risk factors and protective factors that play a role in whether students in the Gunnison Valley are susceptible to substance use. Risk factors are considered variables in the community that increase students’ likelihood to participate in destructive behaviors like drug use, delinquency, dropping out of school and/or violence. Protective factors are conditions that buffer children and youth from exposure to risk by either reducing the impacts of the risks or changing the way young people respond to them. 

Powell said risk factors in the community are the availability of drugs and permissive attitudes toward substance use.

“Gunnison County has one of the highest rates of adult binge drinking in the state,” he said. “We also have a community attitude that is favorable toward alcohol. It’s highly acceptable in our community to drink, to drink in public, and a lot of our events involve or include some sort of drinking.”

Binge drinking is defined as five or more drinks in one day, and national rates show that 12% of the population engages in binge drinking, while statewide 12.5% of the population does so. Regionally 16.8% of people report binge drinking, and locally that number is 17.6%, according to the state public health data.

Powell said there is also a high availability of prescription drugs, and there are local concerns with mental health, including a high number of reports of depressive and suicidal symptoms among the student population. 

He said another risk factor is the number of people living below economic self-sufficiency standards. He said to counter these risk factors, associated protective factors are a priority, such as community opportunities for “prosocial” involvement, students’ healthy attachment to their parents, connection to school and schoolwork and hobbies. 

Results

Based on the latest surveys, Powell and Mirza shared some local trends. District-wide, among students in grades 9-12, binge drinking within the past 30 days has decreased slightly from the previous survey in 2021, and even more since 2019. In cases where the age of initiation is 13 or younger, Powell said there is a correlation to likelihood of becoming addicted to that substance. 

“We want to delay the use of substances,” he expounded.

Results showed that 75% of high school students said they did not drink in the past 30 days, and 83% said they did not binge drink in the past 30 days. In terms of accessibility, however, students reported that it had gotten easier to access alcohol.

Tobacco and vaping use also decreased from previous surveys. Mirza reported that they are seeing a lot of nicotine products at the juvenile office, and many more kids are using nicotine more frequently, particularly synthetic nicotine use such as Zyn.

90.5% of high schoolers said they had not vaped in the last 30 days; 80% have never smoked a cigarette; and 95% said they had not smoked in the past 30 days. 

“The drop-off of students vaping in bathrooms has been dramatic,” said Nichols of this school year. She said she believes this reflects the school cracking down on it, as the district recently installed Halo smart sensors in every public restroom and locker room in CBCS, GHS and GMS to detect vaping. 

Marijuana use by the age of 13 has increased slightly from 3% to 5%, but during the previous 30 days and students’ overall lifetime use has decreased, according to the survey.

Data shows that in the valley, 71% of high schoolers have never used marijuana; 85% had not used it in the past 30 days.

Risk factors

Surveys show that one in five middle schoolers have felt sad or hopeless in the previous two weeks, and that bullying happens at the rate of about 30% in middle school and about 15% in high school. 

“I’m not exactly sure why we see that decrease in bullying as we get into high school, maybe they have better skills,” Powell said, around healthy social norms and communicating. 

Mirza talked about reducing toxic stress versus positive stress for students, describing healthy stress such as taking a test, working on a project or trying out for a sports team.

She said toxic stress occurs when a child is exposed to strong, frequent or prolonged adversity such as physical or emotional abuse, chronic neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence (suicide included) and accumulated burdens of family economic hardship—without adequate adult support.

She said among youth under 18 years old, prolonged activation of the stress is especially damaging. “There can actually change the way our brains develop and affect us through adulthood,” she said.

Protective factors

According to GCSAPP, ways to reduce chronic toxic stress and increase positive childhood experiences include nurturing and supportive relationship(s), having a mentor or other trusted adult in the community, engaging in community and developing social competencies.

Mirza said Gunnison Valley kids are above the state and region averages for high school students reporting that they feel safe at school (91%), that teachers care and give them encouragement (71%), that they find schoolwork meaningful and important (61%) and almost 80% participate in extracurricular activities.

“We know that the more social and community engagement young people have and the more connections they have to trusted adults, the better off they are,” she said.