NISKAYUNA — About 30 people, including town and school officials, attended a Niskayuna Community Action Program meeting Monday evening at Van Antwerp Middle School to discuss teenage alcohol and drug use in the town.

"We've been dealing with this problem for a long time," said Jeanne Sosnow, N-CAP president. "What makes this situation more pressing right now is the upward trend we're seeing in high school drinking and marijuana use."

Among those attending the meeting were Police Chief Daniel McManus, High School Principal John Rickert and town board member Bill McPartlon.

According to a 2016 N-CAP survey — which the group conducts every two years on all sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th graders — 75 percent of Niskayuna High School 12th graders have had alcohol in their lifetime, which is 9 percentage points higher than national rates.

Over half of 12th graders (51.6 percent) had had alcohol in the month prior to taking the survey, and the same amount reported binge drinking (drinking at least five alcoholic beverages in one sitting) — a 13.2 point increase.

Nearly half of 12th graders had tried marijuana in their lifetime, and 32 percent had used marijuana in the month prior to the survey, both rates exhibiting upward trends in the grade.

Sosnow posed two questions: Why do teenagers drink and do drugs, and why is it happening in Niskayuna?

The audience had plenty of ideas, listing causes like easy access to drugs and alcohol, financial means, lack of parental supervision and consequences, and the high-pressure environment students of the Niskayuna Central School District.

"There's a clear correlation between the increase in student stress and propensity to one of these risky behaviors," Rickert said. "They feel the pressure and understand the demands to perform academically or outside of school, and often search for outlets to deal with that — the kids have told us that. That's somewhat privy to our culture here."

Kristin Sweeter, the drug free community grant coordinator for NCSD, agreed.

"One hundred percent in Niskayuna is not good enough," she said. "If you talk to some of our school social workers, we have extremely high rates of anxiety and depression in our district that we're just starting to tap into."

Tina, the mother of a senior at NHS who did not want to reveal her last name, said her son was 16 when he first started experimenting with marijuana and other drugs.

"I think that we're reasonably low-key, none of my kids tried going to Harvard," Tina said. "For him maybe it was pressure. What he tells me is, 'Pot's totally normal, every single person smokes pot, there's nothing bad about it.' "