For a decade now, Williamson County schools have ranked below the national average when it comes to drug use among students, but, that has changed with this year's senior class.
 
Williamson County school officials are alarmed to find in a 2008-2009 survey that nearly a third of high school juniors at that time- 32.2 percent- said they had used marijuana in the previous year.

That's this year's senior class, using drugs, alcohol and tobacco more than any other class in the past ten years.

Williamson County Director of Schools Mike Looney said, "The national trend is that drug use is going up, and the surprising part is that in Williamson County, 9th and 11th grades appeared to have exceeded the national average."

Looney said it's the first time that 9th and 11th graders have exceeded the national average when it comes to drinking alcohol, and juniors have exceeded the average in both smoking cigarettes and marijuana.

"The most likely place for them to use drugs is away from school," Looney said, "so parents need to know that when their children are at their friend's house, that is the place with the highest probability is for them to engage in those kinds of activities."

School is the least likely place students say they've used drugs or alcohol, because the risk, they say, is too great.

Looney said, "They know police officers are at school, they know we have random drug searchers, we had one at one of our high schools yesterday, so kids understand that there's a lot of risk in bringing that kind of thing to school."

Overall, many students don't feel they're taking much of a risk.

Less than half of the students surveyed said their parents would disapprove of their drug use.

"Probably is indicative of the changes in our culture," Looney said, "If you look at TV today, if you look [at] what's in the media, print, it just seems more widely accepted than it has been in the past."

School officials will use the survey to get a better handle on how drug prevention programs are working.