A new survey by the Iowa Department of Public Health shows fewer kids are smoking, tokin’ and getting drunk. Janet Zwick is the director of the Division of Health Promotion,Prevention and Addictive Behaviors. She says they surveyed 97-thousand students in the sixth, eighth and 11th grades last fall about their use of drugs, tobacco and alcohol. She says they saw a decrease of six percent in tobacco use and four percent in alcohol use. She says the use of any drugs showed a one-percent decrease. Zwick’s comparisons are to the last survey taken in 1999. Zwick attributes the drop to a concentrated effort to inform kids about the dangers of their actions. She says it’s a combination of prevention efforts from alcohol and tobacco groups and many agencies working together. This is the tenth Iowa Youth Survey, and Zwick says her preliminary review shows mostly good news. She says there wasn’t anything that raised alarm, although she says they may want to look at their drug prevention effort, since there was a smaller decrease in drug use in the survey. The complete survey can be viewed through a link at the Department of Public Health’s website at www.idph.state.ia.us.
