SCHOOL OFFICIAL GOES INTO CLASSROOM TO TAKE ON STUDENT
MARIJUANA USE

Marijuana: The harmless drug. A mellowing agent. An herb.

Carrie Kulinski tossed those ideas to her class at the Rock River
Charter School this week.

Ever hear that kind of talk? she asked.

They had. One student had heard it another way:

"God made weed. Man made alcohol. Who do you trust?" he
recited.

Kulinski was out to convince her students that "weed" is no good for
them. She knew she had a hard audience. Surveys have consistently
shown that only alcohol is more popular among local teens.

Kulinski is the school district's coordinator for drug-abuse programs.
Drugs are a regular part of the district's health classes, but
teachers told Kulinski several years ago that middle-school students
were asking for more information about marijuana.

The district's main anti-drug course, called Prime for Life, focuses
mostly on alcohol. Kulinski searched for an anti-marijuana curriculum
but couldn't find one tailored for teens.

So she set out to create one.

Kulinski spent a year researching her subject. Then she created
Delta-9, a marijuana curriculum for middle and high school students.

The part-time Kulinski is the district's only Delta-9 instructor, and
she has taught it only to small groups at the charter school and the
Truancy Abatement and Transitional Education Center.

The schools have beefed up the marijuana information in Prime for
Life, but Kulinski has heard from students who tell her that Delta-9
is needed in the high schools.

While Delta-9 is a small project in Janesville, Kulinski's work
already has made waves in other school districts. After Kulinski spoke
at a meeting of alcohol and drug coordinators of Dane County, five
districts placed orders for their own Delta-9 curriculum.

The Janesville district is selling the course at $200 a pop. There's
no marketing campaign, but Kulinski expects she'll sell more when she
presents her work at a state conference next year.

But does Delta-9 work? Kulinski said it seems to, at least in the
short term.

She gives her students a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the
course. Answers indicate that students are more likely to believe that
"weed" is harmful after they take the course.

And many students who smoke marijuana indicated the course has
prompted them to consider quitting.

Kulinski said she's a realist about Delta-9's ability to change minds,
however: "They may never believe me. I tell them I'm here to give you
the information, and what you do with it is up to you. "

"This is just another tool in the prevention box. That's how I look at
it."

Lesson 2 of Delta-9 includes a game that divides the class into two
teams. Students at the charter school seemed to enjoy it.

One boy imitated a buzzer sound when the other team picked the wrong
answer.

One shouted "booyah!" when his team scored.

As they played, the game ensured that the messages were repeated, over
and over:

- -- Marijuana use in Wisconsin is 20 percentage points higher than the
national average.

- -- One marijuana joint affects your lungs as much as four
cigarettes.

- -- Marijuana harms more than the individual who smokes it. A national
survey found that frequent users are four times more likely to commit
violent acts and five times more likely to steal.

"Is that from smoking marijuana?" one boy asked.

"It harms other people if you're becoming violent and stealing,"
Kulinski replied.

New research counters old notions about weed

Delta-9 creator Carrie Kulinski said an upsurge in research on
marijuana in recent years produced results that contradict common notions.

For instance, studies have found it to be addicting, damaging to the
brain-especially younger brains-and containing larger doses of
cancer-causing agents than cigarettes.

"You breathe in pretty deep, and you hold it in your lungs. You think
it's doing some damage in there?" she asked her students.

"Probably," responded a boy somewhat grudgingly.

Any Internet search will turn up plenty of Web sites that challenge
the studies and claim marijuana is a relatively harmless substance,
but Kulinski said she trusts the science she has read.

"And maybe the marijuana you were using way back then was not as
strong," she said. "You know, today's marijuana is so strong. I think
that's why we're researching it so much in the past few years."

"I'm not the expert," she said. "I'm just reading the research and
trying to state the facts."