More than a quarter of all Cincinnati-area high school students, and 13 percent of junior high school students, say they use an illicit drug on a monthly basis, according to a survey by a national drug-prevention agency.
The same survey said Cincinnati-area students use alcohol and cigarettes more frequently than respondents nationally.
The illicit-drug percentage is in line with students around the nation. Nationally, 24.6 percent of high school students and 13.6 percent of junior high school students said they use, on a monthly basis, such illicit drugs as cocaine, heroin, inhalants, uppers, downers or designer drugs - manmade drugs that alter moods.
The survey, conducted by the Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education (PRIDE), questioned nearly 15,000 students in Adams, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Hamilton and Warren counties. More than 140,000 students were surveyed nationwide.
W. Bruce Burns, a member of the Coalition for a Drug-Free Greater Cincinnati, the area's largest drug prevention group, said most of the students surveyed lived in suburban or rural areas.
''Too often, we get lulled into believing the drug and alcohol problem is an inner-city problem,'' he said.
Cincinnati-area students differed from their peers around the country by only a few percentage points in the use of most drugs. The largest difference, as much as five percentage points, occurred with cigarettes and alcohol. Local students smoke and drink more often than the national average.
PRIDE's findings were a bit higher for some areas than those revealed by a Citizens Against Substance Abuse survey released in September. That survey, which questioned 35,000 local students, most in Hamilton County, found that 48 percent in grades 7-12 had drunk alcohol in the past year, 30 percent had smoked marijuana and 30 percent had smoked cigarettes.
The PRIDE survey was not scientific. Students were surprised with questionnaires and given 25 minutes to fill them out. They were told their answers would be anonymous.
Dave Query, superintendent of Kings Local School District, said he thinks students gave truthful responses.
''There's no way they can collaborate, and most of them take it seriously because they're anxious to understand and find out what's going on their schools,'' he said.
The survey is used by Congress and President Clinton's National Drug Control Strategy as an indicator of drug use. It is also cited in the Bureau of Justice Statistics Sourcebook.
