DRUG SURVEY

Seniors at Keller and Fossil Ridge high schools sent a chilling message to
officials of the Keller school district in a survey taken last spring. A
full 10 percent of the members of the Class of 1998 said they had used heroin.

District administrators, who released the survey results last week, had
been keeping an eye on the members of that senior class. As a group moving
up through different grades to their final year in high school, the class
was always "a little outside the norm," the administrators said.

We find no comfort in that explanation. Nor were we comforted when Keller
district officials pointed out that reported use of alcohol and some drugs
among students in some other grades had actually dropped a few percentage
points from a previous survey. Admitted heroin use among members of the
Keller district's Class of 1998 and the levels of drug and alcohol use
among other students in the district raise significant cause for alarm.

Fortunately, district officials share our concern and say they want to do
something. Most significantly, the officials are working with Keller Police
Chief Bill Griffith on a comprehensive plan to replace the Drug Abuse
Resistance Education program that is taught to most of the district's fifth
graders.

Griffith favors efforts on two levels: "We need to get more grade levels
involved on the educational prevention side, and we also need to get the
parents and the community involved," he says.

Keller, like our other local other communities, must take drug and alcohol
abuse among our youth as the life-threatening problem that it is. Griffith
has the right steps in mind, but talk must move quickly to action.

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Checked-by: Mike Gogulski