HUNDREDS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS, including second formers as young as 12, are hitting the bottle on a regular basis and getting stoned on marijuana during lunchbreaks.

Survey data collected over the past two years from 2 178 students in 25 secondary schools, revealed this information that include confessions by 12- to 14-year-olds that they had been using drugs for more than five years. Many students indicated their introduction to alcohol and marijuana "began in the home".

The statistics gathered
by the National Council on Substance Abuse (NCSA), were released yesterday
by Cheryl Willoughby to a group of parents huddled beside their own children now on probation for a number of drug-related
and other offences.

The occasion was the Probation Department's 60th Anniversary parent-child symposium entitled Finding Common Ground, at the auditorium of Barbados' Community College (BCC).

"Since 2002, we surveyed 2 178 secondary students in 25 schools which included two private ones," Willoughby told her audience which included among others, Juvenile Court Magistrate Barbara Cooke-Alleyne, and probation officer Rosanne Knight.

"Our findings supported two previous rapid assessment studies that indicated primary school-age children as young as seven years, were using drugs,"
said the NCSA official, who insisted she could "pick out a child who had smoked ganja at lunchtime, just by his or her slow motion and disconnected manner in
the classroom".

Over a year

"What we found," she said, "was that 36 per cent of students indicated some prevalence of drug use.
In addition, 21.3 per cent admitted to using drugs for over one year."

In terms of gender, female students were running almost neck-and-neck with their male counterparts, with 40 per cent of the girls and 45 per cent of the male students who were using drugs admitting they
"had been using for a very long time, often more than five years".

Over a one-year period,
23 per cent of the girls and 28 per cent boys said they were using alcohol and/or marijuana. A further 12 per cent of girls and 18 per cent of boys noted they had been using just for just over a month.

While Willoughby did not have a breakdown of the numbers of male and female students interviewed she said 34.9 per cent of the 12- to 14-year-olds admitted they had been using drugs for more than five years.

In the 15 to16 age group that included fourth formers, 45.9 per cent said they had been using drugs for more than five years and 41.3 per cent of students
17 years and older had been drinking alcohol and/or using drugs for more than five years.