Which New York School Districts Report the Most Student Drug Incidents?

New York school drug incidents are climbing again, and the latest state data shows the problem is concentrated in places most parents would not expect. It is not New York City. When you measure reported incidents against the number of students enrolled, the districts carrying the heaviest load sit upstate, across the Finger Lakes, the Capital Region, and the lower Hudson Valley.

Here is the short version, up front. Among New York's larger secondary districts in the 2023-24 school year, Greece Central in Monroe County reported the highest rate of drug-related incidents at roughly 21 per 1,000 students. Schenectady City and Albany City followed at about 20 and 19 per 1,000. Middletown City and Monroe-Woodbury in Orange County rounded out the top tier near 19 per 1,000. For comparison, the statewide secondary average was about 6.5. That means students in these districts were being written up for drugs at roughly three times the state norm.

The figures come from the New York State Education Department's School Safety and Educational Climate reporting system, the data set that absorbed the older Violent and Disruptive Incident Reporting framework. The numbers were compiled and released by the Office of the State Comptroller in a report published in February 2026, and you can read the underlying report at osc.ny.gov.

The district ranking tells a clearer story than the raw totals do. By sheer volume, the biggest districts always top the chart, simply because they enroll the most students. Buffalo City reported 126 drug incidents, Greece Central 118, and several New York City community districts logged figures in the 70s and 80s. But volume is mostly a function of size. The far more revealing measure is the rate per 1,000 students, which is how the Comptroller framed its own analysis and the lens this guide leads with.

On that measure, the pattern is striking. The districts with the most intense school drug incidents relative to enrollment are mid-sized upstate cities and growing suburban systems, not the urban giants. Greece Central near Rochester, Schenectady City, Albany City, and a cluster of Orange County districts including Middletown, Monroe-Woodbury, and Pine Bush all report rates between 17 and 21 per 1,000. White Plains and Ossining in Westchester, Saratoga Springs, and Arlington in Dutchess County also land well above the state average. This is a statewide story with a distinctly upstate and Hudson Valley center of gravity.

A word of caution before any of these names becomes a headline. Several very small districts post eye-popping rates that are really just statistical noise. Lockport in Niagara County and Central Square in Oswego County show rates above 35 per 1,000, but with only two reporting schools each, a single rough year can swing the number wildly. More importantly, a handful of specialized and residential districts, such as Hawthorne-Cedar Knolls in Westchester, report incident counts that dwarf their tiny enrollments because they serve students placed there specifically for behavioral and therapeutic needs. Those should never be compared to a zoned community district, and this guide excludes them from its rankings.

Roll the districts up to the county level and the geography sharpens. Measured per 1,000 secondary students, Sullivan County tops the state at roughly 21.6 incidents, followed closely by Oswego at 20.7 and Franklin at 20.6. Wayne, St. Lawrence, Tompkins, and Steuben counties all sit above 15 per 1,000. Niagara, Schenectady, Ulster, and Saratoga counties fill out the high end. Nearly every county at the top of the list is rural upstate, the North Country, the Catskills, or the Southern Tier.

The contrast with downstate is sharp. New York City's five boroughs report some of the lowest drug incident rates in the state, between roughly 2.4 and 6.2 per 1,000, all at or below the statewide average. The notable exceptions that combine real volume with an elevated rate are Monroe County around Rochester at 9.4, Orange County at 11.7, and Westchester at 7.5. The Comptroller's report put the regional split plainly, finding that drug-related incidents ran more than twice as high upstate as in New York City.

"It is disturbing to see the rise in bullying and drug-related incidents," State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said in releasing the report, adding that the data shows more work is needed inside and outside schools.

Statewide, reported drug incidents in secondary schools have climbed from about 4.2 per 1,000 students in 2017-18 to 6.5 in 2023-24, pushing past pre-pandemic levels after students returned to in-person learning. Educators and researchers point to a changed landscape. Today's products are more potent and far easier to hide. A few discreet pulls on a vaping pen can deliver a full joint's worth of THC concentrate, and edibles look like ordinary candy. As one New York City assistant principal told local outlet THE CITY, schools have "seen an increase in incidents of kids using marijuana," with use beginning at younger ages. Cannabis sold today often exceeds 20 percent THC, compared with the low single digits common a generation ago.

This is also where careful reporting matters most, because a rise in reported incidents is not the same thing as a rise in student substance use. Two things can be true at once. National survey data, including a 2024 study in JAMA Psychiatry, has found no evidence that recreational legalization drove a surge in youth marijuana use, and some federal measures show teen use holding flat or declining. What has clearly changed is visibility and enforcement. Vapes and edibles are caught differently than joints were, vape-detection sensors in bathrooms generate new reports, and discipline policies vary from one district to the next.

That variation is the single biggest caveat to any ranking. These are reported incidents, and reporting intensity is not uniform. A district that documents and refers every infraction will look worse on paper than a district handling the same behavior through restorative circles or counseling without a formal write-up. New York City, which has leaned heavily into restorative approaches and has fewer formal disciplinary referrals, may be undercounting relative to upstate districts that report more strictly. In other words, the upstate skew is real in the data, but part of it reflects how communities choose to respond, not only how often students use.

For parents, the practical takeaway is not panic but awareness. If your district appears high on these lists, it is worth asking your school what its response actually looks like. Does the building have a substance-use counselor on staff, or only a referral to an outside agency? Are vaping incidents met with suspension alone, or paired with intervention and family support? Across the state, the number of dedicated substance-abuse counselors in schools has thinned over the past decade even as incidents have risen, which means the quality of a district's response often depends on choices made at the local budget table. Families weighing how their districts spend can dig into our breakdown of where New York school money actually goes to understand what is, and is not, funded for student support.

The conversation at home matters just as much as the one at the school board. Talking with a teenager about cannabis potency, vaping, and mental health, without driving the topic underground, is its own skill, and our partners at Family Symposium offer practical guidance for parents navigating tough conversations about substance use and teen mental health. Educators repeatedly tie rising use to unaddressed stress and anxiety, which makes the wellness conversation inseparable from the discipline one.

It is also worth watching how broader school policy intersects with this trend. New York's statewide restrictions on student phones changed the texture of the school day and the bathroom culture where a lot of school safety incidents play out. Whether tighter device rules also nudge drug-incident numbers is an open question, and one we examined when we asked whether New York's statewide cellphone ban is actually working.

The most useful thing this data does is correct a lazy assumption. The districts and counties reporting the most student drug incidents in New York are not the big-city systems people tend to picture. They are upstate cities, North Country and Southern Tier counties, and fast-growing Hudson Valley suburbs. The rates are real, the products fueling them are more potent and easier to conceal than ever, and the response varies enormously from one district to the next. For families, the smartest move is to read your own district's numbers in context, ask what support actually exists behind them, and treat the rankings as a starting point for questions rather than a final verdict. The next full year of SSEC data will show whether 2023-24 was a peak or a plateau, and The Standard will be tracking it.

Data note: Figures reflect the "Use, Possession, or Sale of Drugs" category reported by secondary schools for school year 2023-24, the most recent complete year, as compiled from New York State Education Department SSEC data by the Office of the State Comptroller. Rates are calculated per 1,000 students. Reported incidents are not a direct measure of student drug use.