DEFENDERS RALLY TO SAVE DARE ANTI-DRUG PROGRAM

A passionate group of DARE defenders held a rally Saturday to criticize
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson's intentions to scrap the most widely
used drug-education program in America and to refute national research that
concluded the popular curriculum is ineffective.

"Let's not take something away, let's add" resources, said Kathy Stewart, a
Lehi police detective who is president of the DARE Officers Association,
which claims 247 police officers statewide. "Don't just drop the program .
. . Ask the kids. Ask the teachers."

Joining Stewart was a crowd of about 50, some of them uniformed police
officers from as far away as Cedar City and Cache County, showing their
support for DARE at the offices of the Utah Council for Crime Prevention in
Salt Lake City. Speakers at Saturday's gathering denounced a national study
that asserted DARE does little to deter drug use among kids and teens.
Tibby Milne, executive director of the UCCP, claimed such findings were
flawed because DARE has since changed its curriculum.

Milne and other DARE supporters then invoked their own studies, hailing
them as more relevant figures that prove DARE's value. A study of 3,000
high school students, conducted by two professors at Ohio State University,
found that nearly 75 percent of DARE-trained teens were low risks to use
drugs compared with 58 percent of non-DARE students, Milne said.

The only available study of DARE in Utah, where an estimated 138,000
students in grades K-12 participate in DARE, came in 1997. It was performed
by a California State University professor, who tracked 513 students in
Cedar City over a five-year period and concluded that DARE graduates were:
11 percent less likely to use tobacco; 7 percent less likely to use
marijuana; and 6 percent less likely to use alcohol.

But Anderson -- who has called DARE's 17-year-old program "a fraud on the
people of America" -- wants to eliminate funding for DARE in Salt Lake
City, which has spent $289,000 annually to pay for DARE officers. His
no-confidence vote for DARE stems from national research.

In DARE's place, the mayor has said he prefers two programs: "Students
Taught Awareness and Resistance" and "Athletes Training and Learning to
Avoid Steroids."

Anderson was not invited to Saturday's rally, although it was no doubt
directed at him and, perhaps, was an attempt to rouse his constituents.

But Monica Shelton, an administrative assistant to the mayor, did attend
and took notes throughout. Shelton said the mayor wanted to be apprised of
the event just in case the group unveiled new studies showing DARE's efficacy.

"And there's not," Shelton said. "These are things he's looked at for
years, even before he was in office."

Milne, however, said she is trying to get updated statistics.

"It's very hard to say how many kids do not use drugs because of DARE,"
Milne said. "We're trying to get that information."