HIGH SCHOOL DARE OFFERED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FORT

It's great to be first! That's how the local Drug Awareness Resistance
Education police instructors feel about today's inaugural high school
DARE class - believed to be the first in Canada.

RCMP Cst. Helen Meinzinger is attending Fort Senior High this
afternoon to offer the first class of a 10-lesson program to between
80 and 90 Grade 10 students.

Although it was first thought high school DARE was being offered in
Vancouver, further investigations revealed the session commences in
May.

So, Fort Saskatchewan once again leads the way, says Community
Policing officer Cst. Lea Turner, who has been involved in DARE since
1996.

The Fort has been on the cutting edge of DARE since the
beginning.

The program was first introduced to Fort Saskatchewan in the spring of
1996 - one of the first Alberta communities to implement the program.

The program was geared to the Grade 6 level and ironically it is the
former first Grade 6 students from Fort Elementary who are now the
ones to receive the high school DARE.

In the fall of 1998 DARE was introduced for the first time in the
community to Grade 7 students at Fort Junior High. This school term
all three junior high schools offered the program to its Grade 7 students.

Turner notes for the program to be effective, inoculation should occur
every couple of years.

Meinzinger received training last fall in Los Angeles to qualify her
to teach the high school program. At the time, she also experienced
teaching a class of 50 students in an LA school with a population of
5,000.

Meinzinger says she learned things from those students in just one
class and expects the same to happen with the Fort Saskatchewan students.

In addition to talking about the consequences of drug use, topics such
as anger management, how to deal with conflict, peer pressure, the law
and drug specifics will be dealt with.

DARE, as a whole, is designed to give young people the facts about
drugs and alcohol with the intent to guide them against negative peer
pressure by teaching self-management and resistance skills. Developed
by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Unified
School District in 1983, the program consists of lessons for all grade
levels.

Local financial support for DARE over the years has come from Dow
Chemical Canada and, more recently, the Fort Saskatchewan Elks.