FANTASY BECOMES REALITY FOR DARE PUPILS

Wellington schoolgirl Hannah Johnson, 12, wants to know what designer
drug Fantasy looks like and what it does. A family friend, Aucklander
Shawn Brenner, died after taking it, she says.

The St Anthonys School pupil is told by senior constable Roly Hermans
that she has to research the information from a Dare to Make A Choice
drug education booklet and write an article.

"I sort of wondered about it, just because it's in the news. You hear
about it a lot and I knew the guy that died in Auckland," Johnson says.

Ian Leota, 12, also wanted to know about Fantasy. "It's one of the
dangerous drugs that can kill people." He says a family member died
from taking drugs.

Hermans, making a series of Dare education visits to St Anthonys, gets
questions ranging from "what is pot made from" to Hannah's Fantasy
inquiry.

Hannah has never been exposed to drugs and says the lesson she has
learned from Dare is to resist pressure when she is. "I am going to
say no because I am into sport and I love sport and I just couldn't
stand not playing sport, it would harm my performance."

Police manager of youth education services Owen Sanders said Dare,
which starts with pupils as young as seven, teaches children to make
sensible decisions when confronted by drugs.

"So we don't stand up there and say 'don't do this' or 'don't do
that', there is no lecturing."

Topics such as the influence of family, peer pressure, decision making
and being assertive were explored, he said.

"We have related them to a programme which gives youngsters
understanding about how to . . . avoid using drugs in an unsafe way."

But research done by Auckland University on behalf of the Ministry of
Education, shows little is known of how successful programmes such as
Dare are and how the programmes are being used in schools.