Drug use in schools is on the rise. According to a national study, 1 in 5 students drink, or use drugs throughout the school day. More than one third said it was fairly easy to do without getting caught. The study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse states that 60% of the teens in the study reported that drugs are used, kept or sold at school. The study shows that 44% of students knew someone who sold drugs at their school. HealthDay News states that, "It makes sense that [students] do it at school where they congregate with their peers". According to the Huffington Post, more than one half of American teens will have tried an illicit drug by the time of high school graduation. 
Reasons for drug use are said to be as follows: family instability, peer pressures, pressures from society, and depression. Teens are reported to say that seeing everyone doing it, makes it hard to say no. The typical profile of a teenage drug user has been said to be students who preform poorly in school and males rather than females. HealthDay News states that drug use in schools is on the rise, because it says, "54 percent of private high school students report[ed] that drugs are available in their schools versus 24 percent in 2002 and 61 percent of students at public schools compared with 46 percent in 2002".
Huffington Post says schools have been, "trying for decades to curb or stop the use of drugs in schools". Schools have set up programs such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) and using phrases such as "Just Say No". Even with these programs set up, the statistics for student drug-use in school have skyrocketed since 2002. Psychotherapist Elizabeth Jorgensen says, that it's a culture problem. She goes on to say that kids these days do not understand the danger that drug-use could have on their life quite like they used to. Bruce Goldman, director of substance abuse services at Zucker Hillside Hospital, in Glen Oaks, N.Y., even brings up the point that "if kids know who is using drugs, why don't the staff?". Many people state that the only way to bring teen addiction to a stop is to try harder to prevent teen substance abuse and that goes for parents as well as school officials.
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