West Seneca, N.Y. (WBEN) - School administrators across Western New York have expressed concerns with an increase in drug and mental health problems among students.
Members of the Erie-Niagara School Superintendents Association (E-NSSA) gathered Friday in West Seneca at Kids Escaping Drugs' campus to further discuss concerns with teenagers having increased access to cannabis products that may be laced with other drugs like THC, amphetamines, bath salts, and opioids.
Administrators shared some stories of how students and staff members have been affected by drugs on school grounds, and how incidents such as this have been on the rise. A lot of the uptick in drug use in schools can be tied directly to how kids are affected by potential mental health issues, where drugs are used as a coping mechanism.
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While some can possibly tie the issue at-hand to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on kids, President of the E-NSSA, and superintendent of the Hamburg Central School District, Michael Cornell says this has been an issue that significantly pre-dates the pandemic.
"The drug epidemic predates COVID. What's the effect of COVID? It made it a lot worse," said Cornell during Friday's press conference. "You keep kids out of school, you keep them in their basement playing video games for all that time, that was a likely outcome. I think a lot of us recognize that was something that was likely to happen.
"I think it's important we understand what got us here isn't going to get us where we need to go. ... We're not going to suspend our way out of these problems, we're not going to arrest our way out of these problems. What got us here isn't going to get us there, and I think that's a part of the message this morning. A coalition of committed partners; it's not a partisan issue, it's not just a family issue, it's not just a school issue, it's not just a drug issue, it's not just a mental health issue. It's just a real problem that we need to work together, link arms and try to solve it together."
Jodie Altman is the executive director at Kids Escaping Drugs, and echoes Cornell when she says the COVID pandemic made the drug situation among teenagers much worse.
"When you take kids who are used to having their world revolve around their social life and you take them and put them in a basement to learn for a year, nothing good is gonna come out of that. They don't have the coping mechanisms, they don't have the resiliency and the skills to come around that," said Altman on Friday. "We struggled as adults, so I think not having specific numbers, I can tell you from what we've seen, it just made this bad situation worse."
Dr. Brian Graham, superintendent of the Grand Island Central School District, says the No. 1 concern of superintendents across New York State was mental health of students in school. During and after the COVID pandemic, Dr. Graham says those concerns are increasing exponentially.
Part of that reasoning for Dr. Graham is the influence of social media and other outlets online that kids are often glued to, and are being targeted by certain companies.
"When children are connected to their devices, their smart mobile devices, those devices are reinforcing themes of anxiety, depression, self-harm. That's a huge and significant issue. During COVID, children were online all the time. Online on their phones, online on Snapchat, Instagram, online with Tiktok," said Dr. Graham.
"There's been excellent reports done nationally on the algorithms that are used in those tools, and the main goal is to keep children connected within those apps. Tiktok, for example, or Instagram, I'm a big Bills fan, I have Instagram, if I stop and I watch a Bills highlight, I can guarantee I will receive, in a few more swipes, more NFL, more Buffalo Bills content. If I'm a child who is depressed, or is living in a world of anxiety or depression and I stop and watch a video on self-harm, a video on cutting, a video on drugs, I'm going to get more and more of that content. The algorithm is designed to match up with what you're interested in and keep you in that space."
As times have changed over the years, Altman feels the COVID-19 pandemic was a scenario where everything came at once for kids, creating some dangerous situations for kids what could be contributing factors into their mental health woes, thus turning to different ways of finding some sort of relief.
"When we were kids, you had TV, you had your regular phone, but you didn't have Facebook, you didn't have Instagram, you didn't have Twitter. You didn't have the pressures these kids have now to have the very best phone, the very best sneakers, the very best clothes. And then you didn't have a pandemic that isolated these kids that, oftentimes, were already struggling with mental health issues," Altman said. "And then all of a sudden, we opened up the world from the pandemic and we say, 'Go back and function the way you need to function.' 'But wait a minute, I've been stuck by myself or in a house where there, very well, could have been drug use going on, there could have been a lot of domestic violence. You put me in the trauma from the [pandemic], maybe trauma from at home, and now you want me just to walk away from that when I'm 14-years-old and don't have the skills to do that.' I think everything collided at the same time."
In Altman's 37 years of helping and serving kids of all ages cope with drug and mental health problems, she says there's more knowledge now with how to handle these situations than there has been in the past.
"We're seeing things now that we saw a long time ago, but we're much more in tune with mental health, and we're much more in tune with kids struggling with mental health being ashamed, being fearful of saying anything, so they try to treat it themselves. That's where the drug use comes in," Altman said.
Dr. Graham knows there needs to be more work done from all different entities to try and help kids and keep them safe. It's part of the reason why he feels Friday's event took place was to bring to light an issue that far too often gets lost under the rug.
"In my 37 years as an educator and my 21 years as an administrator, I've never, never seen staff become suddenly ill because of how cannabis is being laced with other entities like amphetamines and opioids. This was a shock," he said. "We've got to keep children safe, and honestly, we got to keep everybody around them safe, and we've really got to attack this issue."
With all the different experts and resources available for kids in schools, there's also the public resources available that can hopefully remove the stigma of children getting the help they need, whether it'd be for mental health or substance use.
"If we can remove the stigma by educating our children and educating our parents that it's OK to ask for help prior to a child getting suspended, or getting serious consequences, that help is there; There are so many agencies in Western New York willing to help children," Dr. Graham said. "Horizon Health Services is here, Kids Escaping Drugs, their face-to-face intervention program is so outstanding, we use it as a tool to send children with their parents here to Kids Escaping Drugs to get an evaluation. And then we expect that the parent and the child comply with whatever the interventions here recommend.
"It may be they recommend going to an outside agency for substance use counseling, it may be they need to be given a bed and a chance to work through their addiction in a more medical way. But by reducing the stigma and showing the community all of the opportunities that exist to help kids, I think will bring us closer to reaching a goal of keeping kids safe."
Altman agrees that this issue needs to keep getting attention and being talked about. The more it's brought to light, the more the stigma is taken away and kids' struggles can be normalized.
"That mental health is not a choice, that substances use is not a choice. Nobody wakes up one day and says, 'I want to be an addict,' or 'I want to have anxiety or depression.' We need to say to these kids and we need to say to these families, 'Your struggle's real. There is no reason to be ashamed and embarrassed, and that there's resources out there for you to talk to,'"Altman said. "Maybe the first resource we give you is not the right one, maybe it's the second or the third, but there is help. You saw that today. You saw people who, otherwise wouldn't come together, come together with the same message. There's no need for silos anymore, and that we need to take the stigma away."