STUDENTS TODAY ARE DARED TO FAIL

Illegal drugs are a significant part of the culture here in Boone.
That is no gigantic shock or revelation. It is like that in most college towns.

Sometimes, folks do not know when enough is enough, and the source of
that problem is drug education in the schools, or lack thereof.

While I am a proponent for the legalization of marijuana and actively
endorse a person's personal freedom to choose what they do to their
bodies, I have to admit that sometimes people take it too far.

Illegal drugs are not entirely bad, unlike what the government wants
you to believe. But once that realization is made, young people throw
out everything they were told growing up and have to learn the truth
about drugs themselves, often the hard way.

Many of us have heard stories of overdoses or have seen them first
hand, or watched as our friends and classmates washed their futures
down the drain by not being careful and thinking they had everything
under control.

Why does this happen? Like I mentioned earlier, it is because after
years and years of only hearing the negatives associated with drugs,
thanks in large part to the DARE program, teenagers figure out they
were being lied to and disregard whatever tips or facts they learned
in the first place.

The initial point I want to make is that illegal drugs are not
immoral. They are wrong only in a matter of opinion, which happens to
be the opinion of those in charge of this country.

The DARE program is clearly a failure because it preaches that
illegal drugs are downright wrong without exception.

Officials within the program have even admitted the failure and
concluded that there needs to be an extensive overhaul of the system.
Other studies done by independent firms, doctors, the media and
universities have reached similar conclusions.

So why has a program that has had millions of dollars pumped into it
been hardly effective?

Let us start with what they teach. Just like what sex education used
to be back in the day, the DARE program focuses on the bad, telling
just one side of the story. Abstinence was the main advice given
during sex education decades ago, while "just say no" is still DARE's strategy.

It took an outbreak of AIDS and a substantial number of teenage
pregnancies to convince schools to tweak how they taught sex, but for
whatever reason, they will not change the approach on drugs.

Learning about drugs does matter, and it can be the difference
between life and death. So the good has to be taught along with the
bad. After having all the facts laid before them can students make
educated decisions. When they know they are not hearing the whole
side of the story, it makes them less likely to listen at all.

Secondly, look no further than who teaches the DARE curriculum to
find the biggest flaw.

Police officers, specifically the school resource officers, who are
the lowest of the low, are the ones informing our kids about drugs.
Quite often parents leave it up to the schools to teach their kids
about the potentially dangerous substances because they fear they
might screw it up. So what happens is our youth learns from the least
experienced people possible.

We can make a difference in this fight. There is still a long way to
go to legalize certain drugs and lessen the penalties for doing
others, which both need to be done. Until then, we cannot simply tell
students to say "no," hope that they do, and give up on them if they
choose otherwise.

The preeminent solution is to acknowledge that some will take drugs
and our only hope is to instruct the right and safest ways to use them.

Michael Cooper, a sophomore journalism major from North Wilkesboro,
is an intern lifestyles reporter.