Higher IQs Welcome Highs on Drugs? Rockwood Reacts

Many risk factors for drug use have been identified, and youth have been targeted for anti-substance abuse campaigns for decades. 

One emerging factor most recently identified in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, however, just might surprise you.

Those tested in a high IQ group were much more likely to try marijuana by age 16. At age 30, high IQ women were twice as likely as low-IQ women to have used cocaine or marijuana in the previous year.

Men with high IQs were 46% more likely to use methamphetamines, and 65% more likely to use ecstasy than their low IQ peers. 

What may be more interesting is that these statistics held regardless of parents' socioeconomic status, psychological stress during adolesence and their adult socioeconomic status. 

I talked to several professionals in the Rockwood School District as an example of how local schools deal with drug use risk, especially in gifted teens. 

The Rockwood School District's Drug-Free Coalition has an extensive substance abuse prevention initiative slate, including such programs as TREND (Turning Resources and Energy into New Directions), TATU (Teens Against Tobacco Use), RHORS (Rockwood Helping Others Remain Safe), and STAR (Supporting Teens at Risk). School district employees serve as sponsors, and prevention curriculum is set in place in areas such as physical education, science, social studies, and fine arts classes. 

Renee Heney, coordinator of the Rockwood Drug-Free Coalition, said most programs focus on youth as a whole without singling out particular demographics. Program survey feedback has shown youth-to-youth messaging as key to a good message. This can include older peer mentoring, or a panel which features a teen who may have become an addict. 

"We feel that one very critical way of reaching teens and adolescent is not adults harping about the statistics, but the older student mentoring that the schools can provide,” Heney said.

The Rockwood School District provides several levels of curriculum for gifted children, called the Center for Creative Learning (CCL) in Ellisville, starting at the kindergarten level. In elementary school, the students spend a one day a week in the program. In middle school, there is the "academic stretch" class, which gifted students attend every other day. In high school, gifted teachers serve in an advisory capacity. 

The gifted programs not only help engage students who may otherwise become bored or seek out new experiences, but also develops critical thinking and problem solving skills that may help gifted students channel their energy into helping society rather than experimenting with drugs. 

"We talk a lot about what responsibility means, and how to solve problems appropriately—both personally, in the community, and in the world at large," said Dr. Linda Smith, coordinator for the CCL. "These are kids with the capacity to understand complex issues and work through reasonable, realistic ways to make a difference."

This capacity to understand problems may also be a factor in their predisposal to drug use—many gifted children feel the weight of problems other children might not consider. This is called "overexcitability", and Vicki Kemp, a mother of two excelled teens and a gifted education teacher for Rockwood, said its one of the possible factors that could motivate gifted people to escape with drugs. 

Despite their ability to process information differently than their peers, societal pressures remain. Gifted kids, and often their classmates, will research drugs to find the "safest" ones. 

"Some gifted kids think they can use, and they’re too smart to get hooked, and they found out that’s not the case,” said Kemp. 

But Kemp's daughter gave her some insight on how to approach that idea. 

“She said that people talk about 'gateway drugs', but what she has seen, is that you have to be willing to put that in your body," said Kemp. "It's more a 'gateway attitude.'"