Reducing the Demand for Drugs

For all its successes in the war against illegal drugs, the California
National Guard has long realized that the only sure way to halt the flow of
drugs into this country is to eliminate the demand for them. By helping
parents, educators and other community leaders infuse children the drug
users of tomorrow with the self confidence, self respect and self
awareness necessary to resist the lure of drugs, the California Guard is
striving for nothing less than the elimination of illegal drugs.

Attacking the demand side of the drug problem is a logical move in the
overall counterdrug effort, said Lt. Col. Dennis Banowetz, the California
Guard's Drug Demand Reduction Coordinator.

"If we can address some of the common root causes of drug use peer
pressure, gang activity and others early on, we stand a much better
chance of stopping a child or young adult from using drugs for the first
time," Banowetz said. "If we can do that, we can significantly reduce the
market for drugs and thereby reduce the drug dealers' profits while
increasing his risks through interdiction and eradication."

The National Guard's involvement in demand reduction programs is a logical
outgrowth of the Guard's traditional communitybased orientation, Banowetz
added.

"Unlike members of the active force, who operate out of large bases and who
tend to move every three years, we're longterm members of our
communities," he said. "We live here, we work here, we worship in the same
churches, our children go to the same schools. And like all members of the
community, we have an obligation to support the community's drug prevention
efforts."

The California National Guard first became involved in the state's drug
demand reduction, or DDR, efforts in 1989.

"At that time nobody really knew how to go about reducing the demand for
illegal drugs," Banowetz said. "So the California Guard's demand reduction
program has developed over the years, based upon guidance we got from the
U.S. Congress, from the National Guard Bureau and from the state's adjutant
general.

"Things didn't get off to a flying start, however, for we found early in
the program that we are not good drug trainers," Banowetz said. "When we
first got this mission, we thought we'd just send some soldiers out to tell
kids to 'knock it off,' but when we got to the schools we found that the
kids knew more about drugs than we did."

The other problem the Guard initially encountered, Banowetz said, was that
teachers felt they already had so many wellmeaning organizations coming
into the schools that they really didn't need any more.

"So we sat down to look at what we could do that would really help,"
Banowetz said. "We started by sending six Guard members to six different
communities throughout the state to do community assessments. Their mission
was to find out the resources the community organizations used to deal with
drug prevention and what their needs were. They reached out to every
school, religious organization and law enforcement agency they could think
of."

Once the Guard's DDR staff evaluated all the information gathered in the
communities, it found that one of the greatest needs of all the
organizations was in the training of volunteers.

"One of the things the National Guard is best at, of course, is training,"
Banowetz said. "We're good planners, we're good coordinators and we're good
at developing leaders. And we've got a lot of unique resources that most
communitybased organizations don't have access to. And that became our
niche: we began doing whatever we could to support communitybased
organizations involved in drug prevention."

That support is now provided in three general areas: support to schools,
support to communitybased organizations, and support to youth programs.

"Our school support includes things like bringing in our computer experts
to hook up school computer systems that had been unused because no one had
the expertise to get the systems online," Banowetz said. "We then helped
train the teachers on how best to use and maintain the computers. We also
were able to lower the risk among latchkey kids by helping bring together
parents, educators, business leaders and others to address the problem of
kids with too much unsupervised time on their hands. And we were able to
use our language experts to translate student handbooks into a variety of
languages so they could be used by a variety of students. It was great
training for our linguists and it helped the schools at the same time.

The Guard's support to communitybased organizations and youth programs
includes such things as providing young soldiers and airmen as role models
and mentors for atrisk youths, supporting Boy Scout troops with personnel
and equipment, and providing aircraft and equipment for static display
during community drugawareness events.

"One of the best things we do," Banowetz said, "is act as mediators between
oftencontentious organizations. Because we don't have a political agenda,
we can serve as an honest broker, bringing people and groups together to
work toward the common goal of keeping kids off drugs."

The California Guard's DDR program has given schools and community
organizations greater access to Guard facilities, personnel and equipment
for use in drugfree youth events and programs. The DDR program supports
such ongoing projects as drug education and youth recreation programs,
Guard mentorship programs, and training community and student volunteers in
implementing programs intended to enhance learning and self esteem in
elementary school pupils.

"All of the 68 communitybased programs the California Guard's DDR program
now supports have a single goal," Banowetz said. "That goal is to prevent
drug abuse by children. Achieving that goal requires much more than just
drug education. It takes entire communities teaching skills and creating an
environment where drug use is not even a consideration for young people.
The California Guard is, and will continue to be, an integral part of that
effort."