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Drugs, alcohol top concerns about kids

We asked: What's the biggest problem our kids face? Most rank drugs, alcohol over family problems, poverty.

Jim Camden  •  Staff writer
Published April 1, 2008

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When we worry about the problems our kids face today, we may concentrate less on the causes and more on the symptoms.

That could be one conclusion to draw from the Our Kids: Our Business Poll of Spokane and Kootenai counties, which asked 800 people what they think is the biggest problem facing kids.

Drugs and alcohol, the largest block of respondents in both counties said, followed closely by family problems. Ask a similar question anywhere in the country, and drugs and alcohol would probably be No. 1 or No. 2, said Del Ali of Research 2000, a Kensington, Md., company that conducted the surveys in late March.

"That's a top concern," said Ali, who handled the polling for The Spokesman-Review, KHQ, KXLY and KSPS as part of a monthlong media partnership to highlight problems with child abuse and neglect. "It's not necessarily 'my son or daughter is engaging in it,' but they fear that the influence is there."

Clearly, there's a perception in the two-county region that families are under stress, Ali added, whether it's from divorce, single-family households, economic stresses or lack of "quality time" when parents work two jobs to keep up.

About two-thirds of the adults surveyed in Spokane and Kootenai counties listed either drug and alcohol problems or problems within the family as the biggest problem. Just under one in 10 said they believed the biggest problem was poverty, poor schools or child abuse and child neglect.

Ranking the problems children face or picking the most significant one is difficult, said Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. Many times, the problems are interconnected, and children from broken families are more likely to have problems with drugs, live in poverty or experience abuse and neglect.

That's not to say children from two-parent homes never have problems with drugs and alcohol, or children raised in nontraditional families always will, Sprigg said. But there is a correlation between problems in the family and the other problems mentioned in the survey, and the rates are higher for children who are not in an intact family, he said.

Child abuse and neglect may be less visible than drug and alcohol abuse, Sprigg added. Teens on a street corner drinking or doing drugs may be more visible than a very young child being abused down the block.

Drugs and alcohol may be more of a symptom than the root cause of problems facing the community's children, said Mary Ann Murphy, executive director of Partners with Families and Children, and the Spokane Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Council.

Studies show that when terrible things happen to children as they are growing up – problems ranging from child abuse and neglect or sexual abuse, violence in the home or losing a parent – they are more likely to develop addictions as they try to numb their pain, Murphy said. The more "adverse experiences" they have, the harder it is to break that addiction.

Dr. Robert Anda has spent about 40 years studying those connections and will be talking about that research at the Our Kids: Our Business luncheon April 24 at the Spokane Convention Center, Murphy said.

Ed Shelleby, of the Children's Defense Fund, said survey results seem to suggest that people recognize the results rather than the root causes of problems. "Drug and alcohol abuse are certainly a huge, huge problem," Shelleby said. "But they typically take place later in life, in teens or young adulthood, and are a symptom of other, earlier problems."

The Defense Fund, based in Washington, D.C., recently released state-by-state statistics for what it calls its "Cradle to Prison Project," which points out the pressures children face on a wide range of topics, from poverty to inadequate health care to poor education.

According to statistics the group has compiled, one child in six in Idaho, and one in seven in Washington is poor. The numbers are higher for black, Latino and American Indian children. It also found that one child in 12 in Washington and one in eight in Idaho have no health insurance; about a third of children in each state had not received recommended immunizations; and more than 60 percent of fourth-graders in each state could not read at grade level.

Some children struggle with a combination of poverty, poor education and inadequate health care, Shelleby said: "They're all so interconnected."

Child abuse and neglect are another root cause of drug and alcohol abuse, he added. The most recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggest that 880,000 children are abused each year. That's about one child every 36 seconds.