Sept. 15--A program at New Tech High School in Zion aims to cut students' tobacco use by harnessing teens' desire to follow the crowd -- in this case, a large majority of students who say they don't use tobacco.
According to the Lake County Health Department, 15 percent of New Tech High School students surveyed in the spring of 2014 said they used tobacco. The same survey, however, found that slightly more than a third of New Tech students said they thought at least half of their classmates used tobacco. The numbers suggest that New Tech students assume drug and alcohol use is more common than it is.
Students and teachers at Zion's New Tech are working with the county health department's Tobacco Free Lake County program, which is designed to close the gap between what students think their peers are doing when it comes to tobacco use and what's really going on, said principal David Frusher.
"(Eighty-five) percent tobacco-free is a pretty high number," Frusher said. "It's something to be recognized, but we want it higher. We want it to be at 100 percent."
While peer pressure is often talked about as a factor that can push teens to experiment with drugs and alcohol, a social norms campaign like New Tech's uses the desire to fit in to try to push students away from substance abuse, said Mary Egan, director of outreach at Rosecrance, a nonprofit offering addiction, substance and mental health services in Chicago and Rockford.
"The idea is to educate teens that not everyone is doing it. So if they learn they're not alone in not using, they have the strength to stand up to pressure, say they don't want to use and feel confident in that decision," Egan said.
The campaign, which students in the school's Healthy Youth group started planning last year, kicked off last week with lunchtime presentations from the health department and student-designed posters and computer desktop backgrounds highlighting the message that most New Tech students choose to be tobacco-free, Frusher said.
Students also wrote down their personal reasons for avoiding tobacco, which will be turned into a collage in the school's cafeteria and auditorium, Frusher said.
The data come from the Illinois Youth Survey, an assessment conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois' Center for Prevention Research Development and funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services. It is given to middle and high schoolers every two years.
While there's a chance students may over- or under-report their substance use, Danielle Ryan, with the Lake County Health Department, said the survey has ways of flagging potentially false responses and is the best available data on Illinois teens' use and perceptions of drugs and alcohol.
Data on students' responses weren't immediately available at the district level, but a countywide report backs up the notion that New Tech students aren't alone in assuming drug and alcohol use is more common than it is.
Countywide, 19 percent of students thought more than half their peers had smoked cigarettes in the past 30 days, when only 3 percent of sophomores and 8 percent of seniors said they'd done so, according to 2014 survey results. Include other tobacco products, and the usage rates are similar to New Tech's, with 7 percent of sophomores and 18 percent of seniors using tobacco products in the month before the survey.
Nearly a quarter of Lake County high school seniors and 13 percent of sophomores said they'd used marijuana in the last month, but more than 40 percent of both groups thought a majority of their peers had. And while about a quarter of Lake County seniors underestimated how many of their classmates drank alcohol in the previous month -- 45 percent, according to the survey -- about a third of them thought more than 70 percent of their peers had been drinking.
Ryan said the health department has conducted similar social norms campaigns related to tobacco and alcohol use at other high schools in the county.
"It takes a little bit of time to build that trust that they know we're giving them accurate information," she said. "There's definitely some shock and a little bit of disbelief."
Students may overestimate drug abuse in part because well-intentioned prevention programs that don't provide statistics on use may leave kids with the impression it's a more common problem than it is, Egan said. Also, students who don't use may be less likely to talk about their choice if they think it's unpopular, creating a "silent majority," she said.
Posters and messaging campaigns may sound like small steps, but Egan said they can be an important part of drug prevention programs and may be more helpful than some of the more traditional "scare tactics."
"There, if you have a student who takes some sips, tries some cigarettes and thinks, 'I didn't drop dead,' they start to question what they've been taught," she said.
New Tech High School focused on tobacco use based on survey results showing both an opportunity to reduce use and a mismatch between students' perceptions of their classmates' use and their actual use, said Frusher. It's possible they will expand the campaign to include other substances in the future if survey results from this spring indicate similar potential benefits, he said.
lzumbach@tribpub.com
