Editorial | Do a fuller drug, violence survey

Jamaican adolescents might indeed have moved on to a new and more dangerous pill-popping culture of drug-taking, necessitating different approaches to the problem. But last week’s report on the development contains critical information gaps, which, if left unplugged, could lead to the misalignment of resources and the challenges to be resolved.

The situation, it seems to us, calls, urgently, for a broader study of drug use among schoolchildren, including how the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, which kept most students out of the classroom, might have influenced their drug use, and the types of drugs that became available to them, and how. A parallel study should look at the question of violence by, and against, adolescents during their education hiatus, and how that is impacting their return to the classroom.

The point is that decision-making is improved when it is supported by empirical data. And it is not unlikely that there is a nexus between drug use and violence in schools, which, based on anecdotal information, increased last term, the start of the post-pandemic return to in-class teaching and learning.

There has been, over the past several days, significant attention to the report by the National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) that a psychotropic drug, known as ‘molly’, which has characteristics similar to ecstasy, as well as edibles (food laced with compounds from ganja) and vaping (inhaling vapour containing nicotine and flavours) have emerged, in that order, as the drugs of choice for Jamaican high-school students.

“Prior to this, what the council has found in our studies is that alcohol, tobacco and cannabis were the most popular substances,” Uki Atkinson, the NCDA’s research analyst, said at a press conference.

It is not clear whether the NCDA has done any other major research since then. However, a 2014 survey by the council found that nearly two-thirds (64.1 per cent) of grade eight to 12 students had, at some point, drunk alcohol, and that 44 per cent had done so in the month before the survey. Additionally, over one in four (27.5 per cent) of the students had smoked cigarettes, including approximately one in 10 (9.6 per cent) in the previous month. One in five (20.7 per cent) had smoked ganja, of which one in 10 (11.7 per cent) did so the previous month.

EASY ACCESS

With respect to drugs that are illegal – unlike alcohol and tobacco – 43 per cent of the students reported that marijuana was the easiest to access, far outstripping the 5.5 per cent who said cocaine was easy to get, and the 4.5 per cent who claimed it was easy to get their hands on ecstasy.

In that regard, last week’s report represented a huge turnaround in the drug of choice for the Jamaican high-school student, compared to eight years ago. However, the 2013-14 survey used a sample of 3,365 students in 38 high schools across the island. The assumption, therefore, is that, given the sample size and the breadth of participation, the 2013-14 survey was highly representative of the high-school population.

The study on which last week’s report was based, was conducted in May among 160 grade eight to 10 students in 13 schools in 13 parishes, utilising focus group discussions. A score of guidance counsellors were part of the project.

While this assessment is welcome, and perhaps points to a trend that the authorities are aware of, it is important that there is a survey similar in scope to the one of 2013-14, to provide more precise data with which to inform strategy.

Given the reports of a sharp uptick in student-on-student violence in the wake of last term’s return to classroom teaching, it would also be useful to have hard data for comparison with previous studies. It makes sense, too, to hear what students say is their current impulse to conflict.

For instance, in a 2017 survey the NCDA found that students in the 13-to-17 age group were 40 per cent less likely to get into physical fights than seven years earlier, while the number of students who said they faced bullying in the month before that survey was down 30 per cent on the earlier period. However, in the same survey, nearly four in 10 of the students (38.9 per cent) reported being seriously injured in the year up to the survey, with boys accounting for 43.8 per cent of the injured.

Perhaps the updated data can help the education and other policymakers to determine what worked in the previous period in reducing intra-school violence, where the gaps were, and what might be done now to improve the situation.