One in five high school students smoked...

ATLANTA — One in five high school students smoked marijuana in the last year, and half took a drink, according to a 24-state survey by an Atlanta-based anti-drug group.

The recently released results also showed that fewer than 2% of the students surveyed reported using alcohol or drugs on school premises.

“Students use drugs in their homes, in the homes of friends and in cars, primarily at night and on weekends,” said Dr. Ronald D. Adams, who wrote the report. “We don’t have a ‘school drug problem.’ We have a community drug problem.”

The Parents’ Resource Institute for Drug Education questioned students in grades 6 through 12 in 24 states during the 1987-88 school year.

The survey was conducted in schools in Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

More than 203,000 students completed the questionnaire, which was distributed at 302 schools, organization spokesman Doug Hall said. Although the survey is not a scientific sampling, the group believes that the results are significant because of the large number of students surveyed from every region in the country, Hall said.

Students did not sign names to the questionnaires, which were machine-tabulated by the group to protect confidentiality, Hall said.

Among high school students surveyed, defined as grades 9 through 12, 20% used marijuana at least once in the previous year. Other percentages were: beer drinking, 58%; wine coolers, 56%, and liquor, 46%.

Of the high school students who drank, 30% said they usually got drunk when they did.