Focus on Education; Drug Education Programs

Welcome to Focus on Education, a radio series highlighting events, people, and programs at the University of New Mexico's College of Education. I'm Roger Crowe. With us today is Professor Michael Hamis. Dr. Hamis is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Promotion. Professor Hamis and Miss Sally Davis of Pediatrics recently received a grant from the Department of Federal Education to design drug education programs for drug-free schools. The particular emphasis of this program is alcohol, use, and abuse. When we talk about these, we talk about educational programs for drug-free schools. What is a drug-free school as you see it, Mike? Well, the Reagan administration came out with money, particularly a lot of energy came

from the ANSI Reagan, and they started allocating money with the theme of drug-free schools, and this is where we got this money from, and the emphasis is to focus, to design projects to get rid of the drugs in schools, and make a drug-free, and that's where the emphasis of the Reagan administration started with ANSI Reagan being involved, but called drug-free schools, just saying no, and that approach, and that's where that theme came from. Is it a reality that we'll have drug-free schools? No, it really isn't, at least in my view, because kids will always experiment when they get, particularly when they get to mid-school and early high school. For instance, the steepest rate of adoption of cigarettes occurs after a child makes a transition from mid-school to high school in the first four or five months. That's when a child is most vulnerable. To say, to have a drug-free school is not reality, I think we have to look at this, see the real perspective of this, and saying, okay, there are problems there.

What is the most likely outcome we can expect? To me, the real issue is to get them to be responsible. We can't go out and watch kids every Friday night when they go to football games or with dances. If your son or daughter takes the car and Friday night, you're hoping they're going to use a better judgment than using things, but the reality is is that they will drink beer. Sometime now they will drink beer, and for the most part, many of them will try some joint or something, marijuana, or whatever. They will try it, and I'm not saying that's right or wrong, at least my concern is to listen. If you're going to do those things are consequences. If we educate them and focus on the reasons why kids do this, we can get some, perhaps many at an early age, to make good choices and not to have that heavy experimentation. Because if they have heavy experimentation, they're more likely to develop habits, and that's what we don't want. Kids will experiment. We can, what we call, to delay the onset of experimentation. If we do that, we'll have a greater probability of kids not becoming developing unhealthy habits.

But we won't get them all. How serious is the alcohol problem with youth today in New Mexico or in the United States? Alcohol is the most common drug use. It's used by all age groups, particularly adolescents. It's very easy to get. It's a severe problem. If you look at the problems that occur during adolescence, in all age groups, in 1979, the United States government developed what's called objectives for the nation. In all age groups, the death rates have decreased, except in the 15 to 24-year-old age group, where violence is very high, autofatalities are very high, and it's all related to drug use, particularly alcohol. And so that there, in itself, tells us it's a very severe problem, and it's the most common drug use by adolescents. So it is a very, very big problem amongst our youth, and even a greater problem amongst the minority youth, for example, accidents and related trauma kill more Indian people than

any other factor, including heart disease and cancer. Moreover, alcohol abuse has become a severe problem amongst American Indian teenagers. For example, results from a 1980-81 survey indicate that for 10 or 12 substance abuse categories, Indian teenagers have higher lifetime prevalence rates of substance use than high school seniors nationally. And one other thing, the morbidity and mortality rates among Indian youth is four times higher than the national average. So it's a very severe problem. It does more than perhaps any other drug in robbing, taking away life of our young people. We're mainly focusing on the Indian teenagers, because they do have, in this state, a more severe problem than other populations. What type of drug prevention programs do we have in the public schools now? For the most part, we have a very abandoned type of approach, where most programs are

taught, perhaps at one grade level, maybe seventh grade and maybe ninth grade, and they're taught for half a year, but they don't have flown continuity. Many teachers who trained them are not well-qualified to teach them. They teach out of books. It provides very cognitive information, and it really doesn't meet the needs of the students. And so therefore, we don't really prepare students to make good decisions, particularly drug choices, drug types of choices. So is your contractor your grant supposed to design a curriculum for dealing with this? Yes. We received funding from the Federal Department of Education to design a curriculum, and we're in a process of revising it. It was designed two years ago, it was fifth through ninth grade curriculum. And now we receive extended funding, and when we're finished, it'll be K through 12. And from kindergarten through ninth grade, each grade will be different. And each grade is built upon the previous grade.

Each lesson in each grade has flown continuity, there's depth to this, and it actually walks the student through the learning process, so it maximizes the learning. And it really concentrates on why kids use and misuse drugs. Where most programs today throughout the country, not only here in this state, really do not focus on why kids use drugs, and just focus on general what types of drugs they are, and those types of things. And it really doesn't get at the real reason why kids use drugs. And that's a very big reason why kids use drugs, because they're not well educated about some of the reasons that influence them to use drugs. It would seem to me that you've got a real difficult problem, because when I see kids today who make a lot of money selling drugs, it would seem to me that you're going to have a problem of convincing these other kids not to participate in a drug abuse program. That's a good point, because I think that's one issue in our society that there is money to be made in selling drugs, and that is a very big barrier.

I think the only, perhaps not the only way, but a very good way to get around that is to begin very early. And to associate their decision making to the choices they make, and to their lifestyles, and to the consequences of those choices, because most kids do not believe that certain things will happen to them, such as that I can drink a 12 pack and still drive, and then they can't. And to, if we start early and educate them that there are consequences to the choices they make, and there are benefits and risks. And that kids do die from car accidents in this state. It's a very big problem with car accidents and people being killed. If we can educate them on that and make them realize that, hey, you can make that choice, but there are some very consequences, you have a greater probability of helping them make good choices. Is there any evidence to suggest that book learning is going to change behavior? Yes, there is. This really began, extensive research began in late 70s, because in the very late 60s, in the early 70s, health education, drug education began being taught by school districts, because

school districts said, hey, we have a problem, kids using drugs, what can we do about this? And so they said, well, it sees drug education. Well, most of these programs taught drug education 10th, 11th grades, but it was too late. That's after the fact, because usually kids are most prone to use drugs during the middle school years. When they make a transition from elementary to school to middle school and from middle school to high school. And so if you don't concentrate on those years, you're missing it, and the kids have already developed a habit, and it's hard to get people to quit smoking, as we will know. We know that. And it's also hard to get people from stop drinking once they started. And so during the 60s, it was very informational type things, based on books and those things. Then in the late 70s, they began to take not so much focus on how can we prevent kids from using drugs, but ask the question, why are kids using drugs, and then focus on those whys. And for the most part, the last eight, nine years, the literature that has come out has been very successful in reducing the kids in smoking cigarettes, using alcohol, marijuana

and those things. And not, but we can't, I don't want to say that we can guarantee that kids are not using these things. But what has happened is that kids who do drink make more responsible decisions instead of drinking six pack to drink two cans of beer. So it's more responsible use, because I don't think we can say we're going to, kids will not use drugs, because alcohol is throughout our society. It's their adults use it. It's, we're blissed on the media by it, and so we, it's, I think it's very unreasonable to say that kids will never drink, because we, you know, we see it all the time. But we can get them to be more educated and have some responsible use in alcohol and drinking and driving. And I think we're seeing more of that. So there has been some success. I read just the other day or heard on the news that our governor, Carothers in this state, said that that really wasn't the responsibility of the teachers to teach about drug education. That somebody else should do that or about substance abuse. What do you think about that?

Well, I would disagree with that, because if you look at our society today, it's much different than it was 20 years ago, it's just much, much different. The adolescent today has tremendous amount of stress, stress that you and I did not experience when we were going up. There really isn't a place for these kids staying in our society. We live in a very urban type society. We don't have programs for kids, recreational programs in the Albuquerque public schools. They don't have a middle school athletics. And so that influences kids to find identity. And some big issues during adolescence are identity, sexual identity, peer approval, peer acceptance, cultural identity. And who am I? And they need all these things. And so if we don't provide programs and to help them to make good decisions, they're not going to make them. And if you look at some of the problems our society is, as I mentioned earlier, suicide is, I think, the second leading cause of death amongst the 15 to 24-year-old age group, depression, school dropout, teenaged pregnancy, violence and accidents.

Those are all symptoms of a greater problem. And the question becomes, well, how can we better prepare our students to function in this world, because we live in a very high-tech world and a very fast-paced world, and a lot of kids get out of high school and they can't make it? And so the question to me then becomes, what can we as a society do to address this problem? And I think schools can do a lot to help students make better decisions. I think at least we should try. I think there's a moral issue there. I think to do nothing would be very wrong. But I think we can. There are resources in this state. There are some very good programs that can help kids make better choices. And the literature supports that. I think his point was that we're not even educating our children in reading, writing an arithmetic. How can we go ahead and take on drug abuse, or how do we take on drivers' aid? I mean, I think you can go ahead and carry those things drawn out. And just what is our responsibility, I think, is a makes difficult choices for us. We've got to think those things through. And you're saying that you think it's a part of the teacher's role?

Sure. I think, for instance, why don't we just teach them to just say no? It's not enough because there's such pressure on pure acceptance and pure identity. And kids don't know how to say no. When they get to adolescence, they start pulling themselves away from the family. And the most influential variable is pure. The peer group. I mean, they have to be accepted. And so they think they have to do whatever their peers are doing to be accepted. And so there's two men who's pressure there. They don't have the skills to resist peer pressure. And so if you look at all the things out there that influence kids, you have the media and the peer. So the two strongest, then you have the family and community and different types of messages throughout the state, particularly the media. There's a lot of sources that influence kids. And they don't realize that. And so if you educate them to identify these sources and teach them skills to resist it, we can do more than just say no because kids don't know how to say no. They just don't know how. Well, let me ask you another question. Since you've studied this issue, just how genetic is the problem of alcoholism?

I read about this. I hear about it. Is it a genetic problem? There's definitely evidence that suggests that. I mean, there is evidence that says some kids are more likely to become alcoholics than others. However, I don't think we need to go beyond that and still teach responsible use that you do have options and kids do have choices. And we need to express that because if you are more prone, kids should know that. And that if you have one can of beer and you may are more likely to become addicted to that or become alcoholic or dependent on marijuana or something else and kids need to know that. But we need to go beyond that and say, hey, everybody is prone to this, but you need to make good choices. Now we teach you skills to help make good choices. What are you going to teach them? You say you're going to teach them the skills, Mike. What are you going to teach them? What we really focus on is what's several things critical in this is that to design a program where you walk the student to the process. And I think there are very few programs that actually do that where kids do not have the mental capabilities to think abstractly, to make extrapolations.

And for the most part, teachers lecture. And so they throw out different concepts and they don't really meet the needs of students. So we're trying to gear this program to meet the needs of students and also to walk them through the process and try to make the connection of choices, consequences, and lifestyles. And there are benefits and risks to each choice. And so we developed a theme called becoming your own best friend and what does that mean? And we started out in a very broad concept of what that means, lead them in then to some very basic concepts of decision making, resisting peer pressure, analyze messages from the media, and then focus on healthy alternatives, and then focus on, at the end, summarize all this and then tie it in again to become your own best friend. So we actually walked them through the learning process and it has intensifies the learning process. And it's geared where the students actually teach themselves. The teacher doesn't do the teaching. And by doing this, it enhances self-esteem, self-concept confidence, all those types of things which are very critical.

And those are some of the reasons why kids use drugs because they don't have those things. And so it's geared to one to teach certain content areas but also then designed to enhance those things too. There's like a hidden curriculum within this curriculum. If kids learn by going from the concrete to the abstract, what kinds of concrete things are you going to do with these youngsters? Give them a drink? No, basically, one is not to preach to them. I think if you preach to these kids and say, you do not do this, they're going to do it anyway. But to present us to them is, OK, here's the big picture. And here you have all these choices. And here's how these choices affect your health. And yet here are the things that influence you to do certain things like the media. If you look at the commercial with Budweights commercial, Spud McKenzie, they're designing dolls for the Spud McKenzie doll for the young population, the party animal and all that. And to get them to realize that, hey, the media is doing that to get you to buy their products so they make money and they don't really care whether you drink a lot or if you

don't. They just want to make money. And to get them to realize with cigarette commercials, the billboards, the marble man and all that stuff, they don't really care about your health. And to get them to recognize these variables, these sources of influence and they're attempting to persuade you to do something that probably isn't healthy for you. And that for you to become your own best friend, in this case, that's what the theme is, is that you have to make your decisions, not let someone else make your decisions for them, in pertaining to your health. And if we can get them to then learn some skills to resist peer pressure other than to say no, and to identify the messages sent by the media, then we have a chance of them making better choices. And so far, it's been very successful, it's been well received and I think the kids have liked it. And it's been going very well. What kind of resistance do you run up against? What about the communities and the parents and the families, is there any resistance? We do run in some resistance because we're asking some of the teachers to do more. They have to cramp in more time and they're already overworked over burden.

That's a problem. Also, we need insurface training. So we have to pull the teachers out of the schools, there's money involved there because you have to have our substitute teachers so forth. That's a problem. There are some people in the community believe we're teaching them to use drugs that we shouldn't be doing this and that's not the case. And so we do run some problems with this. And to get around this, we do have a parent informational night, we invite the parents who this and we tell them how we're doing this, why we're doing it, what we hope to achieve, what the impact will be, and what input they can have into this. And we also try to offer parent programs as helping them deal with adolescents because adolescents can be a time where there can be a big generation gap, a big communication gap and if we can narrow that gap, kids are less likely to abuse and misuse drugs. So we're trying to counter some of that and really to get the community to realize that there are problems are not only in any community but throughout the country and then to say, hey, this is what we can try to do and together we can perhaps make some positive impact.

And that's what it's about. It's really about saving lives. If you look at Stephen Glenn, he's done a lot of work in the family and adolescents and he made a statement that each one of us is worth $1.2 million to grow a national product. Worth how much? $1.2 million to our lifetime. If you look at all the kids out there, if throughout the country who drop out of school, who become addicted to drugs or misuse drugs, who get caught up in the drug world, look with that cost or society. If you look at these kids out there who have tremendous potential, if we can nurture it along and foster it along, there may be a four or five-year-old kid out there who may someday develop the vaccination for AIDS and look what that can do for the world. So we're talking about developing human potential and helping them experience quality lives and you can't do that if you're tied into the drug world. And drug use, misuse and all that stuff starts very early.

So we're talking about developing human potential and teaching kids to live a very fulfilling life. And so we're taking a different approach to this, trying to extend this into throughout their life. And we have to start early. Do you run into any cultural problems? Yes, particularly, well, what we've done is, with the Indian cultures, designed a videotape using Indian actors. So we have Indian role models. So that's very critical. We've also done it with the Hispanic population to help, I mean, we don't win a bond here, like kid from California and surfboard coming and doing something with the Indian culture because it's going to work. We have to have things that tie into the Indian culture. And so we try to have Indian role models to participate in that part and also to focus on the Indian cultures and beliefs because we can't pretend those ones don't do exist. And it should exist and to respect those things and to tie the program into those cultures and the beliefs.

Are there parts of the Indian culture, Native American culture that uses drugs for religious purposes? I believe there are. And that's part of their culture and it's used specifically for a certain event. And hopefully when teaching the children this is that that's used for a specific event, but not on a daily basis throughout the year and to get them to realize that's a special occasion. And where I come from in the Midwest, there are taverns all over and every event there is beer. I mean, every place you go, there's beer, I mean, I grew up around that. Here it's not quite as, it's not quite as, what's that? Quite prevalent. Quite prevalent. And you don't have as many taverns around here as you do back in Midwest. And so I think, you know, that's sort of a little more removed. Not necessarily they can't get it, but they're not heavily influenced. I think the Midwestern people are.

So that's part of the culture and to somehow tie it into the culture to teach responsible use or not using it at all. Sure. How much were you able to involve the Native American or Hispanic groups themselves in the designing of curriculum for some of these programs? We have the staff involved in doing this. We've all been teachers at some level. We've also, in most of not all of them, but several are teachers who taught in any population somewhere, Indians themselves. And then when we implemented the pilot project, we got feedback from the teachers. And so we've gotten input from culture and that respect. Have you any evidence now that any of this makes any difference? In the pilot project, we implemented the program to about 329 kids. And the data so far suggests that we do what we did is more kids demonstrated that they used alcohol more responsibly instead of drinking the six pack or 12 pack, they drank two cans

of beer. They would let someone be a driver who didn't drink. And so it did tell us that concept of health, it did make some impact, that they did think about the consequences and they didn't have to misuse drugs to have fun. I mean, there are alternatives. You can do other things besides strength. And so the evidence that we have so far demonstrates that that fewer kids were using drugs to get drunk, particularly alcohol, and fewer kids were misusing drugs or fewer kids were drinking alcohol to get high. And so we didn't have some good impact there. And also the schools are receptive of that because it is a problem. Did the schools come to you to ask that this be done, or was this something that you and some of your co-workers saw as a problem? Sally Davis has done a lot of wonderful things with any population and she has a number of sites and different programs that she works with. And so when we got this money, it was geared for this population and then we went to them and told them what we'd like to do and if they were interested and that's how we kind

of made these contacts. And they've been very receptive. Where did you run the pilot program? The pilot program was done in 86 at Cainian Seatville Sky City in Lagoon, Acama. And from there, we've extended it to about 60 some schools in the state to about 5,000 students. It'll, this summer, we have revised it. It'll be taught again to probably 5,000 students. We're redoing the video. We're making it as best as we can make it. And they'll also get a booster program with it. And I think when we're all finished with it, it'll be one of the best programs in the state easily. Well, now, where were, okay, you're kind of answered that, but where are you going with it now? You're going to do what? It'll be implemented, made better, and then hopefully we'll build upon it. When we're finished, we hope to have a K through 12 curriculum. Okay. And because before that, we didn't have that, I think it's needed. I don't think they have one in the state. And servings built upon each other. Well, it's hard, you know, for me to see that we've had a lot of change.

It seems like what we've got is even more drugs, more substance abuse now than we had 20 years ago. And there are people like yourself that are out doing training programs. And I think that's wonderful. But it seems like there is so much money being thrown into this. When kids walk around with gold chains on their neck and so forth, it's awfully hard. It seems for me that an education program is going to come in and get them convinced that they don't want to get into that drug culture. There's a lot of money to be made. Yes, there's a lot of money. And also, I think our whole lifestyle is very different today. And it's going to be very difficult. And I think it's a battle that no one's, we will never win. And basically, I think by trying, we can get some people. We can basically save lives. Because if we don't try, nothing's going to happen. If we try, we can touch some lies and we go, we'll see what will work, what will not work and to make changes.

And if we start early, I really believe in educational system. If we start early and have good programs, and we have the time to teach it, we can make a difference with some of the kids, not all, and probably not even most depending on a geographical location. But we can save some lives, and so we're trying. Well, I think it's commendable. I guess, and I'm not being skeptical, because I agree with you that we need to try on these things. It just seems to me like we're fighting a real difficult battle when our own administration and so forth deals with the drug people from foreign countries and so forth. I mean, there's such a drug traffic here that we seem on one hand, we're saying we shouldn't do this. I think it may even get worse for it gets better, I don't know what better will be. The latest, some of the evidence coming out suggests that kids are fewer kids are using marijuana today than 10 years ago.

Alcohol is the biggest problem, because it's well accepted in our society. It's been the most part, it's easy to get, it's not as costly as some other drugs, and it's the most common drug amongst our adolescents. How about Quebec? That too. I think the evidence shows fewer kids are smoking tobacco than 10 years today. That connection is being made, we're making some progress in that area, but as far as the overall drug picture, it's always going to be a problem, because one, I think there's a lot of association to kids that, if you smoke your end up, kids want to be adults. In the past, that's why kids began to smoke, I mean, I was a big thing to do, but that's changing. I think what's helping us, one thing that's helping us is that kids are our society today is more health conscious, and the media is doing a lot, you're being blitzed with that. I think that's helping. That, hey, this thing called health is very important. If I take care of my health, I won't be as sick as often. Hopefully I have a happier life and make better choices, and that means not using the misusing drugs.

I think that's helped counter it, but there's a certain population out there in every cultural group that are very vulnerable to it, and some of those kids we can get in the rest we'll try to get. It's awfully hard to think, for instance, about the future, and to say, if you don't smoke now, you won't have a heart attack when you're 50. It's such an abstraction, and I think almost somehow or other, it's a need to have a much more concrete, much more close relationship between the event and its consequences, and that's hard. It's hard. But I think you're doing a wonderful job, Mike, and I really appreciate it visually this afternoon, and I'd like to have you tell us more about how you end up with this whole project and give us some hard data as to succeed. It's nice to be here and share this. If you would like a cassette of this program, or more information on this subject, call

Area Code 505-277-4806. That number again is Area Code 505-277-4806. Focus on education is produced by Larry Cronin of KUNM Radio in Albuquerque, and Roger Kroth of the College of Education at the University of New Mexico.