According to the report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, by the time students reach the 12th grade, 70 percent will have smoked cigarettes, 81 percent will have drunk alcohol, nearly 50 percent will have used marijuana, and 24 percent will have used other illegal drugs.

"If there's asbestos in a school, parents raise hell about it and they won't send their kids to school until it's out of there," said CASA President Joseph Califano. "Yet they send their kids to schools riddled with drugs every day. I mean, when parents start to feel as strongly about drugs in school as they do about asbestos in school, we'll take a major step."

The "Malignant Neglect: Substance Abuse and America's Schools" report was conducted over the past six years and is based on a survey of 12- to 17-year-olds, their teachers, principals, and parents. "Finger pointing and denial constitute a conspiracy of silence that threatens millions of our nation's children and savages many of them for life," the report stated. "Parents deny that their child or their child's friends could be using drugs. School administrators have every incentive to downplay the extent of smoking, drinking and [illicit] drug use on school grounds. Teachers claim it is their job to teach math, reading or history, not to spot or police substance use by their pupils."

The report estimated that drug misuse and addiction will add 10 percent to the costs of elementary and secondary education this year. Schools will spend at least $41 billion in costs related to class disruption and violence, tutoring, truancy, and teacher turnover, according to CASA.

The report recommended that parents become more involved in their children's lives, and for teachers and principals to work harder to keep drugs off school premises. In addition, the report said that communities need to implement more out-of-school activities for children, do a better job enforcing laws that prohibit the sale of cigarettes and alcohol to minors, and provide adequate treatment for addicted teens.

"The collective response is reminiscent of the three monkeys guarding the Shogun's stable: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," the report said. "For the most part, we close our eyes or look the other way; we choose not to speak up and demand that our schools be substance free."

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