FOR AT LEAST 1 STUDENT, DARE WORKED

My daughter wrote an essay for her sixth-grade class this week titled
"Just Say No." The occasion was a visit from the DARE officer at her
elementary school.

She has been through DARE training in the past - the acronym stands
for Drug Abuse Resistance Education - but I hadn't really paid too
much attention. This time around, she wrote an essay about it on the
home computer. It was still up on the screen as I sat down to look
something up. So I read it.

"DARE has really helped me decide not to do drugs," it begins. "If it
weren't for DARE, my life probably would have been horrible, because
if somebody would've told me to do drugs, I probably would have said
yes, because I was uneducated about drugs, and curious. Now that I
have gone through the DARE program, I know I will NEVER do them, not
even once. I know what a drug is, the names of them, and what awful
things they do to your body."

"Before DARE, I didn't even know what a drug was. I thought that they
were only medicine, like Tylenol and Advil. I didn't know that they
were terrible goodbyes to your normal life, like meth and marijuana."

Yikes!

After the initial shock wore off, I realized this didn't really mean
she was one step away from a life on the streets. She's not only a
top student, but also a competitive gymnast who works out at her
sport so many hours each day she likely wouldn't have time to be
exposed to drugs.

But that's the point of the DARE program. Every kid needs to learn
about the danger of illicit drugs. As a parent, you simply can't bank
on the idea that your kid is too smart or too busy to be touched.

Chandler - unlike several other Valley cities - continues to operate
a strong DARE program. Phoenix, Mesa and Scottsdale have cut or
eliminated their DARE units in recent years.

Critics contend that there is no significant difference of drug use
from kids who have and haven't been through the program. They argue
that the required police resources are better used battling crime on
the streets.

But that thinking hasn't taken root in Chandler. In fact, the
president of the Arizona DARE Officers Association is a Chandler
officer, Dave Parsons. The organization's secretary is another
Chandler cop, Robin Valenzuela. "Officer Robin" administers the
program at my daughter's school.

The next day at breakfast, instead of burying her head in the comics,
her usual morning routine, my daughter was reading the front page.

It was Part 3 of the Republic's series this week on meth.

I smiled and thought that, at least in Chandler, I'm glad "Officer
Robin" is still on the job.