{"id":70434,"date":"2017-03-28T16:56:50","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T22:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/state-budget-proposal-cuts-youth-surveys-on-drugs-sex\/"},"modified":"2017-03-28T22:56:50","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T22:56:50","slug":"state-budget-proposal-cuts-youth-surveys-on-drugs-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/state-budget-proposal-cuts-youth-surveys-on-drugs-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"State budget proposal cuts youth surveys on drugs, sex"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lundberg\"
Lundberg<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The budget draft introduced Monday cuts about $745,000 to end the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The youth-risk surveys are sent every other year to randomly selected middle and high school students and are used to chart risk behaviors such as smoking, drinking and bringing guns to school. The anonymous surveys have been done since 1991.<\/p>\n

The survey has long rankled conservatives, who consider the questions an invasion of a student\u2019s privacy.<\/p>\n

Some also question Colorado\u2019s ability to keep the results anonymous, though survey administrators insist they don\u2019t track students and have never had a security breach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe range of questions being asked of students I believed was inappropriate,\u201d said Republican Sen. Kevin Lundberg<\/a>, one of the Legislature\u2019s main budget-writers. Lundberg cited questions about suicide as being needlessly intrusive.<\/p>\n

The high school students were asked in 2016, \u201cDuring the past 12 months, did you make a plan about how you would attempt suicide?\u201d<\/p>\n

The question was followed by a question about how many times the child attempted suicide in the last year, which struck Lundberg as inappropriate.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I parent, I look at this and think, I wouldn\u2019t want that entire range of questions posed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The draft budget isn\u2019t final, so the survey funding could be restored through ongoing negotiations. And there\u2019s a chance Colorado could seek federal money to continue it.<\/p>\n

But state health officials say the survey\u2019s future is very much uncertain without state support.<\/p>\n

\u201cScaling back (the survey) would make it nearly impossible to look at the health of subgroups of students such as by age, grade, and race\/ethnicity,\u201d said David Brendsel of the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment, which runs the survey in conjunction with the Education Department.<\/p>\n

Democrats in the Legislature oppose the cut, saying policy makers need to know as much as possible about risky youthful behaviors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis survey is the best way to take the temperature of what\u2019s going on with our kids,\u201d Democratic Rep. Jonathan Singer said. \u201cWithout this, we\u2019re flying blind with our tax dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not clear how hard Democrats will fight to restore the survey funding. Lawmakers have to trim hundreds of millions from Colorado\u2019s $27 billion overall budget \u2013 including a massive proposed hit of about $500 million to hospitals \u2013 so it\u2019s uncertain whether the survey will attract much attention as lawmakers hammer out the details over the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

Colorado has a Republican Senate and Democratic House, forcing bipartisan agreement on spending priorities.<\/p>\n

Youth advocacy groups that both favor and oppose marijuana legalization hope the survey can be saved. The survey is frequently pointed to as evidence that youth pot use hasn\u2019t gone up since legalization, though children\u2019s perception of pot\u2019s dangers have dipped, possibly foretelling higher use in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe rely on the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey to provide vital information about the impacts that the sale of Colorado\u2019s highly potent marijuana has on youths\u2019 health and well-being,\u201d said Henny Lasley, head of Smart Colorado, which aims to protect kids from marijuana\u2019s harms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lundbergdu1-i-syn The budget draft introduced Monday cuts about $745,000 to end the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey. The youth-risk surveys are sent every other year to randomly selected middle and high school students and are used to chart risk behaviors such as smoking, drinking and bringing guns to school. The anonymous surveys have been done since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[747,2336,15,3903,29,1928],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-70434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-children","tag-colorado-state-officials","tag-colorado-state-senate","tag-juvenile-delinquency","tag-newsletter","tag-teenagers"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70434"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=70434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}