California survey details student drug, alcohol use:

California survey details student drug, alcohol use

By John Sakata/Staff writer jsakata@lompocrecord.com | Posted: Sunday, October 23, 2011 12:30 am | (0) Comments

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Leah Thompson/Staff

Lompoc High School students finish a jog during a PE class. Students in the Lompoc Unified School District recently took the California Healthy Kids Survey, which give administrators a look at the lifestyle choice of students.

Lompoc schools will celebrate Red Ribbon Week beginning Monday, but its stringent anti-alcohol-and-drug message is not one that many high school students hear regularly from their peers, according to a survey.

Lompoc Unified School District administered the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) in 2010-2011, providing administrators a look at the lifestyle choices of students at the district’s two high schools and seventh-graders at the school’s middle schools. The voluntary survey can be taken every two years to measure risky behavior by students statewide.

Seventy-six percent of 11th-graders surveyed at Lompoc High School described obtaining alcohol as “fairly” or “very easy.” Seventy-four percent said it was easy to get access to marijuana.

At Cabrillo High School, 68 percent of 11th graders who responded to the survey described it as “fairly