KEEPING CHILDREN ON TRACK, OFF DRUGS

PEQUANNOCK -- You'll never win if you're on drugs.

That's the message of a winning commercial written by a pair of
13-year-olds from Pequannock Valley Middle School. How good was the
original script? It beat out 1,000 others statewide.

Dana Carrubba and Deanna DeVito started filming their public service
announcement Friday on the Pequannock Township High School track.

"The message is that if you do drugs, it's not just that it can hurt
you," Dana said. "But you could lose your friends and end up hanging
out with people who only like you because you do drugs."

They wrote the script, imagined the visual shots and picked the
background sound. It was a graded assignment from Gillian Freebody,
their seventh-grade Gifted and Talented teacher.

"They were able to get a very powerful, concise concept across in 30
seconds," Freebody said. "They really sunk their teeth into it."

Last September, the Pequannock school district was the first in the
state to launch voluntary, random drug testing at its middle school,
with 250 out of 615 students participating.

About 30 percent of the 250 were tested, Principal William Trusheim
said Friday. None tested positive.

"That's what we expected," Trusheim said. "Particularly at the
middle-school level we view random drug testing as a deterrent."

The two girls lathered up with sunscreen Friday morning and spent a
couple of hours starring in their script -- and producing it -- with
the help of a film crew from Public Image Media.

The commercial depicts Dana and Deanna racing around a track. A
fictional timeline of events in their lives -- First Communion,
joining a basketball team, etc. -- runs like a stock market ticker
tape at the bottom of the screen. The student who takes drugs trips
and falls several times; the one who stays drug-free cruises to the
finish line.

Deanna volunteered to play the part of the student who uses drugs
and continually trips.

"The falling part is to show if you use drugs, it's going to be a
downfall," she said, her knees scraped from the many takes.

The girls' parents said they "absolutely" worry about the growing
pressure -- at younger and younger ages -- on kids to use alcohol,
tobacco and illegal drugs.

"You only have a few short years to get them educated and
confident," said David Carrubba, Dana's dad. "And then the world
influences them even more."

The commercial is scheduled to air this fall on as many as 40
network and cable stations in the state.

"It's a simple concept but a powerful message," said Angelo Valente,
director of Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey -- the contest's
sponsor. "We thought it would communicate well to their peers and
we've found that peer-to-peer messages are the most effective in
keeping kids off drugs."