SCHOOL ANTI-DRUG PROGRAMS FAULTED

WASHINGTON - Sixty-one percent of U.S. high-school-age teens and 40 percent
of middle-school-age kids say drugs are used, kept and sold in their
schools, according to a survey released Wednesday by the National Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse.

The center, a nonprofit institute associated with Columbia University in
New York, also says that neither of the two most popular American systems
for controlling drug abuse by school-age children works very well. The most
popular, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), shows "little evidence ...
of any extended impact," the center concluded. Another frequently used
approach, based on harsh penalties for even minor drug abuse, often
discourages students from turning in substance abusers.

In Colorado, DARE reaches some 150,000 students in 1,000 public and
parochial schools throughout the state, but that number is dwindling. In
1999, the Boulder school district dropped DARE from its curriculum. Still,
Coloradans seem to support the program. In January 2000, DARE raised more
than $250,000 at the Starfish Ball fundraising dinner. The center calls its
report the "first comprehensive analysis of all available data on substance
use in our schools and among our students."

The center, headed by Joseph Califano, who was secretary of health,
education and welfare under President Carter, acknowledges that the amount
of reported drug use among teens nationwide generally has stayed the same
or declined in recent years; except for some new drugs such as Ecstasy. But
Califano said drug abuse would decline more sharply if parents stopped
leaving the problem to school-sponsored programs such as DARE and involved
themselves more deeply.

The center's survey, "Malignant Neglect: Substance Abuse and America's
Schools," is based on 10,000 random telephone interviews nationwide with
parents, teachers and students, coupled with reviews of outside research on
the effectiveness of conventional drug abuse-education programs.

"Drug Free School Zone" laws are prominent among those antiabuse efforts.
Many state legislatures passed such laws in the 1980s, which make
punishment extra severe for drug dealing within 1,000 feet of a school.
Their effectiveness is "not clear," the center's report concluded. It cites
a Boston University School of Public Health study of three Massachusetts
cities that found that 80 percent of drug cases occurred inside drug-free
school zones, although most occurred after school hours.

Zero-tolerance policies in schools, which require stiff penalties even for
minor drug offenses, don't work well either, the center found. The tough
penalties discourage students from turning in their drug-abusing peers.
Those expelled for drug abuse often wind up on the streets or in
alternative schools where drugs are plentiful.

The most widely employed antiabuse initiative is DARE, which is taught by
local police officers, generally to fourth-graders through junior high
students. About 80 percent of the schools in the country use DARE, the
organization says.

Denver's Lake Middle School is one of 18 national sites testing a promising
alternative to DARE called CASASTART. While DARE focuses on sending a broad
antidrug message to an entire student body, CASASTART workers focus on
individual students. The goal is to find out what problems confront a
student and then try to eliminate them - whether that means getting a crack
house off the block, tutoring, or drug rehab for a parent.