SALT LAKE MAYOR PUSHES DARE ALTERNATIVE

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson is urging the school board to adopt new
drug-prevention programs, including one focusing on steroid use, to replace
the DARE program he yanked in recent weeks. Athletes Training and Learning
to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS) would come free to the district. The progr am,
touted as a 2000 "exemplary award winner" by the Center for Substance Abuse
Prevention, has received a federal grant for training, materials and
follow-up evaluations, Anderson wrote in a letter to Superintendent Darline
Robles.

"I encourage you and the board to take advantage of this unprecedented
opportunity and include the ATLAS curriculum in Salt Lake City high
schools, in addition to another drug-prevention program that will be
available to all students," the letter states.

The Salt Lake City Board of Education is scheduled to hear a report on the
program Tuesday evening.

The suggestion comes after the mayor terminated city involvement with the
popular Drug Abuse Resistance Education program despite impassioned pleas
from parents and crime-prevention officials. DARE brings police officers
into schools to teach drug-resistance techniques. The city police
department spent an average $289,000 a year to fund four DARE officers,
their cars and equipment.

Anderson said that DARE is not proven to work and that the state's
drug-resistance program, Prevention Dimensions, is available to all ages.
He cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showing
marijuana use among Utah teens increased from 7 percent to 11 percent since
1991 and that city 12th-graders' use of the drug ecstasy shot up 56 percent
between 1998 and 1999.

ATLAS targets male athletes' use of anabolic steroids and sport
supplements, alcohol and drugs. Parents are involved in homework and
healthy diet goals.

The program was tested in 31 schools and 12 cities in Oregon and
Washington. After one year, ATLAS-trained students, relative to a control
group, showed a 50 percent reduction in new use of anabolic steroids and
reduced use of alcohol and drugs, among other drug-resistance signs. The
data is stated in a program outline apparently copied from an Oregon Health
Sciences University Web page and distributed to the school board.

Several district coaches learning of ATLAS at a training seminar have
expressed interest, according to district health specialist CeCie Scharman.

School board president Kathy Black is interested in ATLAS's proven results
but says she is concerned about its limited scope. "It is a concern to me
if it addresses only the male population. But there may be another
component that goes to women, but I don't know if that's part of the grant."

The mayor also suggests the board examine A-rated drug-prevention programs
in the 1999 National Institute on Drug Abuse's "Making the Grade: A Guide
to School Drug Prevention Programs." They include Life Skills Training and
Students Taught Awareness and Resistance (STAR) programs.

The mayor says he is interested in placing resource officers in district
middle schools after the drug-prevention program issue is resolved.

That proposal "definitely interests us," Black said. The district continues
searching for a DARE replacement, but Black is unsure whether something
besides ATLAS could be implemented this school year.