ST. MARY'S SENDS DARE TO SUMMER CAMP

Schoolchildren Introduced to Drug Program

Yes, the popular drug education program DARE was one of the major
issues in the 2006 campaign for St. Mary's County sheriff. And yes,
Sheriff Timothy Cameron's promise to restore the program, even though
some studies have found it to be ineffective, might have helped him
get elected.

But politics didn't seem to matter to the nearly 60 Camp DARE (Drug
Abuse Resistance Education) kids running around the field Thursday
outside the Dr. James A. Forrest Career and Technology Center in
Leonardtown. They said they learned a lot about the reasons not to use
drugs during the week-long drug education camp. And they got to play
some pretty cool games.

"Today we're doing tug-of-war," said 11-year-old Ayanna Weems, who
will enter sixth grade at Esperanza Middle School. "We've been
learning in lessons why cigarettes and why alcohol is bad."

The free camp, which ran from Monday through Friday, was the county's
first effort in recent memory to introduce the DARE curriculum to
elementary school children, Cameron said. With the blessing of school
officials, Cameron reinstated DARE in the middle schools during the
past year. It had been eliminated by Sheriff David Zylak in 2004.

"It's going well. We're getting really good feedback," Cameron said.
"It's a very comprehensive lesson plan, and the kids get so much more
than just 'drugs are bad.' "

Cameron said he plans to introduce DARE at the high school level when
the first middle school class in St. Mary's to complete DARE reaches
the ninth grade. The Sheriff's Office supplies the instructor and materials.

He said the summer camp will serve in place of an elementary school
DARE program unless funds become available to offer it to the lower
grades. The camp, which cost $3,000, was funded entirely by donations,
he said.

On Thursday afternoon, the campers, who recently finished fourth or
fifth grade, followed a lesson about making the right decisions with a
giant tug-of-war. If their DARE journals were any indication, the
students seemed to be absorbing the anti-drug message.

"Tobacco has 200 known rat poisons. It's important I learned this
because it'll keep me drug-free and away from alcohol and weed," wrote
Tyler Cryer, 10, who will enter the fifth grade in the fall at Father
Andrew White, S.J. School in Leonardtown.

"DARE rocks!" wrote Sydney Armitage, 9, who also will be a
fifth-grader at the school. "If you like having fun while learning
about fun things, this is the place for you."

Several studies have questioned the effectiveness of DARE, concluding
that those who graduate from the program are no less likely to use
drugs than those who do not.

Cameron said that he was aware of those studies but that his personal
experience was that children learn a lot from the program. He said the
school DARE program also had other benefits, such as using sheriff's
deputies inside the schools as instructors.

"There's some things that, quite frankly, I don't think you can put a
quantitative factor on," he said. "Safety and security of our children
in the schools are a priority. This puts police officers in the
schools as part of the instructional staff."

Deputy First Class Angela Muller, one of the DARE instructors at last
week's camp, spoke with more certainty: "If you put a dry sponge in a
bucket of water, does it pick up something?" she asked. "I don't ever
teach anything that I don't believe in."

Even the tug-of-war at the end of the day turned into a lesson about
making decisions, as retired sergeant Mickey Bailey explained that the
winning teams usually picked the strongest, or "right," people. In
life, Bailey said, it is important to choose friends in a similar fashion.

"If it was something about friends, what would you do?" Bailey asked
the group of youngsters, who were dressed in yellow, light green and
blue DARE T-shirts. "You'd pick the right people. This just shows if
you pick the right people, you can win."