The results of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), held in 2003, were made public on Tuesday.
There was some good news for Malta but, unfortunately it was not enough. Some of the findings in the study are a major concern.
The good news is that the number of fifth-formers – aged 15 and 16 – who smoke cigarettes has dropped. The drop in female smokers, however, is marginal, going down by just one per cent to 28 per cent when compared to data collected for a similar survey in 1999. As a percentage, there are more female smokers in this age group. The number of boys who smoke dropped by eight percentage points to 26 per cent.
Although these decreases are welcome, when you take into consideration that we are talking about secondary school children, the number of smokers in that age group is still high. At the same time, the registered decrease means the campaigns against smoking are having some effect on students.
The good news stops there.
Other results released this week are a cause for concern. In the period being examined, there was a three per cent jump – to 10 per cent – in the number of students who used marijuana. Although this is much lower than the average of 21 per cent in Europe, the figures are still not encouraging.
The fact that marijuana-usage has increased by so much in a matter of four years is indeed worrying. What emerges from the report is that even access to the drug has become easier. Twenty per cent of students, compared to 11 per cent four years earlier, said it was easier to obtain the substance.
Use of other kinds of drugs in the age group is smaller, although when you have 15-year-olds taking tranquillisers, steroids, ecstasy, cocaine and other drugs, it is not something that should make us proud.
The results for alcohol use are even worse. Eighty-two per cent said they had drunk alcohol in the year preceding the survey, another 75 conceded they had done so within the month before. Fifty per cent consumed five or more drinks in a row, which for the purpose of the survey was considered to be binge-drinking.
According to the survey, alcohol was consumed in discos, bars and pubs – establishments in which people under 16 years of age should not be in the first place.
Another point is that the law lays down that alcohol cannot be sold to underage people, but technically there is nothing that prohibits 15-year-olds from consuming alcohol. This is a loophole in the law that needs to be closed – and quickly – if we want to control alcohol consumption by teenagers.
It is very easy for people over 16 years of age to buy alcohol and pass it on to underage people. There are also many cases in which underage people buy alcohol themselves.
Sedqa, a government agency, is insisting that this matter should be rectified, but so far its pleas have gone unheeded. The organisation is also demanding that the legal age for alcohol purchase and consumption is raised from 16 to 18 – an idea that, again, has not been taken up by the authorities.
There is another side to the story, and this concerns parents. More than one-fifth of the students questioned said they consumed alcohol in their home. It could be that alcohol was consumed without their parents’ knowledge, but it is believed that in most instances, alcohol is consumed by underage people in the presence of adults.
Parents should never allow, let alone assist, the consumption of alcohol by underage children.
What we need to do to better-control the situation- and cut down on the number of underage persons from consuming alcohol – is toughen legislation and, more than this, enforce it.