Jewish-American students and drug abuse in Israel

Daphna Berman:

The recent arrest of three American high school students in Hod Hasharon on suspicion of drug possession has shed light on the substance-abuse problems that many teenagers bring with them when they come here on study programs that are meant to teach them about Israeli and Jewish culture and history.

The three teenagers were released from house arrest last week after Israeli police seized 840 grams of marijuana in their possession at the end of last month. Charges have since been dropped because the three 17-year-olds are not Israeli residents and none has a prior criminal record.

The three Americans, whose names have not been made public, were students at the Alexander Muss Institute for Israel Education, a high school program in Hod Hasharon for American teenagers. They were sent to Israel under the auspices of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in suburban Maryland, one of the country's most prominent Jewish day schools.

The three students allegedly purchased 1.5 kilograms of marijuana in recent weeks from another minor in the north of the country. The 840 grams seized by Israeli police was what was left of the original purchase, after some had been used and some had been sold. The students, who have since been expelled together with nine other classmates, were first taken into police custody two weeks ago.

"That teenagers use drugs was not new to us, but the quantity that they bought and their intention to sell was surprising," said a police official close to the investigation.

The case has received widespread coverage in a number of American Jewish newspapers, as well as mainstream national publications like The Washington Post. The amount in question - which the teens bought for NIS 10,000 - has sent shock waves throughout the suburban Maryland communities where the three youths live.

But according to Caryn Green, founder and director of Crossroads, the Jerusalem center for at-risk English-speaking teenagers, drug use among teenagers who come to Israel on semester or summer programs should not come as a surprise to parents or administrators. Though exact figures do not exist, Green estimates that some 20 percent of American teenagers on Israel trips will use drugs during their short stay here.

"In America, drugs are becoming more accessible and kids are starting to use at much younger ages," she said. "If they use in America, they will also use here. In any group of teenagers who are away from their parents on a one-year or semester program, there will be some percentage of drug use."

According to Green, a social worker who works near Zion Square, many American teens who come on summer tours or semester abroad programs think that the risks involved in drug dealing and possession are much lower in Israel.

"They think Israeli money is Monopoly money and that Israeli cops are Monopoly cops," she said. "The attitude is that 'I'm American so no one can touch me.' They figure that the worst thing that can happen is that they'll get kicked off their program or have to leave the country."

And in the case of the three Maryland teens, it seems, they may just be right.

The incident with the Maryland teens, though, is not the first time that American students in Israel have gotten into trouble with drugs and the Israeli police. Last year, a 19-year-old American yeshiva student was found dead of a heroin overdose in his dormitory room outside of Jerusalem. A day later, four North American teens studying in two separate Jerusalem yeshivas were taken into custody for selling marijuana to an undercover police officer on downtown streets in the capital. The four students were placed under house arrest for several months, performed community service and were subsequently allowed to return home to the U.S.

"Most of these kids bring their habits with them to Israel," says Prof. Richard Isralowitz, who researches substance abuse at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. "There is a school of thought that says the environment here causes the change, but I don't buy it. The case is not that these children were clean until they came to Israel and then encountered peer pressure here and began taking illegal substances. That may be the case for some, but mostly, we are talking about behavior that was brought with them."

Few - if any - study-abroad or yeshiva programs require a 30-day urine test that screens for the presence of marijuana or other drugs. "Participants fill out a medical form and write that they haven't taken drugs, but no one actually checks to see if that is true," Isralowitz says.

Instead, he says, many administrators try to ignore the issue. "They try to keep quiet because it [drug use] undermines their legitimacy. You don't hear about it because administrators just wish the problem would go away. They figure, 'why get into it, what can be gained?'"

Moshe Kron, director of Magal, an adolescent drug abuse and alcohol treatment center in Jerusalem, said that one of the main problems is that many of the Americans come to Israel with an idealized version of what reality is like in the Jewish state. "Parents send them on these learning programs and think that things will be different for their children in Israel," he said. "Participants in these programs are brought to Zion Square and Ben Yehuda Street to wander around, but they have no parents with them and this requires self-discipline. They are suddenly outside of their natural environment, which causes them to reexamine their values and their norms."

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