DARE DESERVES SUPPORT IN S.L.

On behalf of DARE America and the thousands of dedicated police officers
and educators who have made the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE)
program such a success, I was dismayed to read about Mayor Rocky Anderson's
attack on the DARE program in Salt Lake City.

Aside from being inappropriate and misleading, the Mayor's comments
unfortunately show a lack of understanding of drug education. Worse yet,
the mayor's actions have the potential to put politics in front of the very
important issue of drug abuse prevention provided to Salt Lake City's
children. We are more than willing to debate the efficacy of DARE, but the
mayor's language is neither helpful nor conservative.

DARE has become the most successful drug abuse and violence reduction
program in the nation by applying the skills of law enforcement, schools,
parents and the community, with a regularly updated curriculum based on the
latest drug prevention research. The latest national measures of drug abuse
show a statistically significant decline of 13 percent in teen drug abuse.
We do not claim to be solely responsible for this encouraging decline, but
DARE is a vital component of a comprehensive solution for the multifaceted
epidemic of drug abuse.

In Salt Lake City, four trained, dedicated DARE officers teach the
elementary school curriculum. These officers go into the elementary schools
to deliver 17 interactive teaching sessions. Unlike summer and after-school
programs, every fifth- and sixth-grade student learns about decision-making
skills, peer pressure, positive alternatives to drug use and violence as
well as consequences and responsibility.

I will be the first to tell the Mayor that more must be done if he intends
to have a long-term impact on youth drug abuse. Almost three years ago at
DARE's national conference in Salt Lake City, one of the major issues that
was discussed was the need for effective "booster" programs in middle
school and high school to reinforce the message that children are receiving
from the fifth and sixth grade DARE curriculum.

While I understand that Salt Lake City has begun to reach out to the middle
schools, it appears that the DARE program in Salt Lake City is still
limited to one segment (elementary school) rather than the comprehensive
K-12 curriculum. This is unfortunate. If the mayor would look south to
Cedar City, he would see the positive results that DARE has when it is
implemented in elementary, middle and high schools. A study done in Cedar
City found that drug use is significantly lower among students who have
received multiple DARE interventions than among students who have completed
only one DARE course. Cedar City 10th graders who have completed the
program are well below the national average for drug use.

The mayor appears to be motivated by a desire to implement his new
after-school and summer youth programs at Salt Lake City schools. These new
programs, like all booster programs, are a good idea. Implementing these
programs at the expense of DARE is an extremely bad idea. I sincerely hope
that Mayor Anderson will reconsider his comments in the coming months, so
that we can continue to work together to provide for our future generations.