BIDDEFORD — School officials are exploring ways to curb marijuana use after a survey administered last year showed Biddeford middle and high school students have used the drug more often in their lifetimes than the average Maine student.

The survey – known as the Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey, or MIYHS – is administered to students statewide every two years, and sponsored by the Maine Departments of Education and Health and Human Services. It poses questions about drug and alcohol use, violence, mental health issues, sexual activity, exercise and students’ overall perception of school.

On the most recent survey, which students took in spring 2015, 38.7 percent of BHS students reported having used marijuana at one time, according to documents provided by Biddeford High School Principal Jeremie Sirois.

That figure is 4.1 percent higher than the 34.6 percent of students statewide who said they had used the drug at least once. The same question was not asked in the 2013 survey.

“What’s concerning to me is that we’re still significantly above the state (for that question),” Sirois told School Committee members at their meeting last week.

However, 19.1 percent of BHS students reported using marijuana at least once in the 30 days leading up to the survey, compared to the state average of 19.6 percent.

Biddeford Middle School students were asked similar questions about marijuana use, with 7.9 percent reporting having used marijuana compared to 7.2 percent statewide. In 2013, 9.5 percent of BMS students said they had used the drug.

“We’re still slightly above the state average at the middle school, but things are going in the right direction,” BMS Principal Kyle Keenan said at the meeting.

In a phone call following the meeting, Sirois said he was not surprised to see the results of the survey, which he considers to be a very reliable source of data, but he was still disappointed.

“It’s certainly disappointing, because I think with all our other data, for the most part, our kids and our families have made tremendous gains over the years,” he said. “Yet we’re still above the state in the marijuana piece.”

Karen Scarpinato, who is in her third year working at the Biddeford Teen Center and has worked at summer camps with Biddeford students for four years, said last week that her experiences, for the most part, validate the results of the survey.

“From what I hear, marijuana is really big,” she said. “I hear that a lot. I don’t hear as much about drinking.”

She speculated that much of the marijuana use is driven by students’ personal and family lives. At the same time, Scarpinato said most of the students who attend the teen center, which is off Main Street in Rotary Park, don’t hesitate to report drug use if they see it occurring in places nearby.

When asked Wednesday about the prevalence of marijuana use at BHS and their opinions on the drug, two of the school’s students, who the Journal Tribune has agreed not to identify, presented split opinions.

“I don’t think (marijuana) is a big deal,” said one sophomore, who admitted to trying the drug. “Lots of people I know do it, and they’re not stupid. It’s better for them to do it than other drugs.” The student added that she feels that using marijuana is acceptable as long as it’s not used excessively or abused.

A junior at the school, however, said he does not know anybody who uses marijuana, and hopes that doesn’t change. He said his perception of the drug is that it causes people to do “dumb things” and can be addictive.

Sirois hopes a recent commitment by the Biddeford and Saco Rotary Club to provide financial support to develop a series of events and more curriculum will enhance the school district’s drug prevention efforts.

He said the department also plans to approach the topic together with officials at Saco and Old Orchard Beach schools to gain a better understanding of marijuana use across the three communities.

Jeremy Ray, superintendent of Biddeford schools, said in a phone call last week that he is similarly optimistic about responding to the data collected through the survey.

“I’m hopeful that we will develop programming to be reactive to the data that we’re seeing,” he said.

Bill Paterson of the Coastal Healthy Communities Coalition (CHCC), a University of New England program that aims to reduce substance abuse in northern York County, said one of the most concerning results from recent MIYH surveys is that statewide, students’ perception of marijuana’s harmfulness has gone down. This is because of several factors, he said, including the push to legalize recreational marijuana use in certain states.

While most pro-legalization rhetoric suggests marijuana is essentially harmless, Paterson said studies show otherwise, particularly as it concerns teenage use.

“It certainly interferes with brain development,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is a lot of teens may use marijuana to self-medicate to get sleep or because they’re anxious or depressed, and we’re finding through evidence-based research that in the long run, it’s actually making them more anxious and more depressed.”

Additionally, Paterson said there is a lot of attention being paid to heroin and opioid addiction right now – and rightfully so – but more needs to be done to draw attention to and study the possible connections between marijuana use and heroin addiction.

“A lot of people who are addicted to heroin, they started very early on with alcohol and marijuana,” he said. “Not everybody who uses those substances becomes a heroin addict, but every heroin addict I’ve talked to has (used alcohol and marijuana).”

On Feb. 5, CHCC will hold its third annual summit on teenage marijuana use at the Ramada in Saco. School officials from Biddeford and other northern York County communities will be there, Paterson said, and they will be asked to go back to their schools and develop plans for educating students on marijuana use ahead of another CHCC summit scheduled for the spring.

Despite the MIYHS data concerning marijuana use, both Ray and Sirois stressed their happiness with Biddeford students’ answers to questions in other categories of the 2015 survey that indicate less alcohol use than the state average and in the past.

For example, 44.5 percent of BHS students said they had consumed at least one alcoholic drink in their lives, compared to the state average of 50.9 percent.

Similarly, 8.3 percent of BHS students reported binge drinking at least once in the 30 days leading up to the survey, compared to the state average of 12.2 percent. For BHS students alone, those percentages were down by 10.6 and 7.1 percent, respectively, compared to the 2013 survey.

BHS students also reported less tobacco and prescription drug use than they did three years ago and than students statewide.

“With the overall picture, I was very pleased,” said Sirois. “Still, there’s a lot of room to get better. I’ve certainly targeted marijuana use as something we need to get more information about.”

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or [email protected].