| | |  Editorials | Issues | September 2009 
ProtectYouth: Texas Keeping Parents in the Dark
 Craig Johnson - ProtectYouth.org
September 26, 2009
If parents are the anti-drug, why is the State of Texas keeping them in the dark about student drug use?
ProtectYouth.org, a statewide drug prevention nonprofit, is calling on the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) to stop keeping parents in the dark about marijuana and other drug use trends among youth in their communities. Since 1988, the State of Texas has surveyed 64 percent of Texas public school districts to track trends in substance use among elementary and secondary students. As a result, the largest library of such school district survey reports in the nation has been produced and at a cost of millions of dollars to taxpayers. However, very little of that information has been made available to parents and the general public over the past two decades.
For the first time ever, ProtectYouth.org recently published online student survey results from hundreds of school districts that participated in the Texas School Survey of Drug and Alcohol Use. However, the path to obtaining those results had numerous roadblocks, often requiring intervention by the Texas Attorney General, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission Ombudsman, and the Texas DSHS Commissioner.
"The Mental Health and Substance Abuse Division of Texas DSHS and their contractor at Texas A&M University have gone out of their way to avoid having to disclose the survey reports to concerned citizens," according to Craig Johnson, executive director of ProtectYouth.org. "Some of the obstructive actions on their part include falsely denying possession of the survey reports, attempts at obtaining public disclosure exemptions from the Texas Attorney General, and charging exorbitantly high fees to publicly inspect some of the survey results on-site. In June 2009, Texas A&M University announced that they will be copyrighting the 2009 survey reports for the first time in the program's twenty year history to avoid providing copies to the public."
Before it merged with the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Division of DSHS in September 2004, the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (TCADA) coordinated the Texas School Survey and its confidentiality policy was described in an unpublished report for the statewide 1992 Texas School Survey:
"TCADA has specified that strict confidentiality standards shall apply to all phases of data collection, data processing, and data reporting procedures... Precautions will be taken so that survey responses cannot be identified by individual student, class, school, or district. The final report will not reveal which districts participated in the project."
Mr. Johnson said that he would like to see DSHS and their contractors become proactive in providing all the survey reports to parents and the general public. "Local school district reports may serve as a wake-up call for many parents across the state and encourage them to talk to their children about drug use. Moreover, it may foster a public dialogue about how to best address some of the core drug problems afflicting many Texas communities, such as the harmful influence of the unregulated marijuana market on our youth."
craig(at)protectyouth.org.
See the following reports:
February 17, 1993 report to the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse - confidentiality policy stated on page 47
Craig Johnson's correspondence with Texas A&M University, the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Texas Attorney General.
Texas School Survey of Drug and Alcohol Use Archive
ProtectYouth.org works to promote evidence-based solutions to reducing the harmful influence of the unregulated marijuana market, the root to many of the drug problems afflicting our youth and communities. |
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