MONEY ON LAW ENFORCEMENT BETTER SPENT ON PREVENTION

To the editor:

In 2003 the General Accounting Office of the United States concluded
that the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) Program, administered
across the country by local police departments, "found no significant
differences in illicit drug use between students who received DARE in
the fifth or sixth grade (the intervention group) and students who
did not (the control group)."

Now the City Council is considering putting a police officer in the
high school to combat alcohol and drug abuse. Why? There is no
evidence to support that a law enforcement officer is going to change
the views of those high school students currently engaged in drug or
alcohol use. All the presence of this officer will do is drive those
students underground.

While there may be a few token arrests made, all this will do is
provide some headlines for the newspaper and PR for the
administration and police department. The students arrested, who may
have been able to be reached with proven education and counseling
programs, will now find it harder to get into college, receive
financial aid and have a police record. These for the most part will
be good kids who have made a bad choice.

Why do we think that these kids, who have all been exposed to the
DARE program in elementary school, are now going to be swayed by a
law enforcement program? Is there actually a program or is just the
presence of an officer supposed to keep kids from using? I challenge
the City Council and the School Committee, along with the high school
administration, to research proven programs for drug and alcohol
abuse prevention in all our schools.

The Departments of Health and Human Services and Education have
identified programs that show effectiveness in preventing or reducing
the use of illicit drugs and other substances among youth. I am not
anti-police by any means, but the money used to fund that officer is
better used elsewhere if the true goal is to prevent drug and alcohol
use among the students in Newburyport schools. Even the Reagan
Administration realized that drug abuse is a public health problem.
Let's not fund our own little "war on drugs" simply because we lack
the imagination to look for a real solution.

CAREY LAMBERT

Newburyport