NO ALTERNATIVES DARE'D

There's been a fair amount of criticism of the DARE program of late.

Fuelled by the emergence of the Marijuana Party during the recent
election as an organized political entity and the online publication
of the Merritt Herald (where cyberspace readers can monitor specific
issues more easily), the criticism has come from Victoria, Toronto,
as well as California and Washington, D.C. in the United States.

Curiously, we've seen no criticism locally.

Ask an RCMP officer or any emergency personnel official - if it
weren't for alcohol and drugs they'd get pretty bored sitting around
the office with nothing to do.

It's not that everyone who touches alcohol has an immediate urge to
go postal, or drive their car the wrong way down the Coquihalla or
whatever.

But there are some, and they make up an amazing percentage of the
average officer's caseload.

Add in drugs, and you're pretty much near 100 per cent of an
officer's time - and that's just looking at an officer's time and
expense, that's not factoring in the human cost at all, which amounts
priceless lives lost and damaged.

So it's easy to see why an upstanding, moral, righteous (not
self-righteous), and concerned human being who happens to wear a
badge would want to do something about the situation.

If Cpl. Sean Neary wasn't running DARE, believe, me, he could find
lots of other things to do within the RCMP. The last thought in his
mind is justifying his DARE job.

When DARE was first created it was targetted at the South Compton-Los
Angeles inner city schools. In many (but not all) areas it is
introduced to, they target the high-risk youth first: people
generally speaking want to help those in the most danger first. Many
of the numbers quoted in the letters on the following page may,
indeed, be skewed by these factors.

Even if they aren't, they still contradict each other with one letter
writer stating DARE grads are more likely, and another writer stating
DARE grades equally likely, to do drugs.

Regardless, the real point is if Neary wasn't giving children balance
by showing there is a negative side to drugs, who would? Parents?

Too few have been doing just that. It's why so many schools and
parents have accepted DARE.