Pot smokers back at school

By Coleman Cornelius
Special to The Denver Post

April 30 Five thirdgraders returned to Eaton Elementary School on
Tuesday after being suspended for smoking a marijuana joint on the
school playground.

As the 9yearold boys rejoined their classmates following a weeklong
absence, school officials and Eaton police grappled with how to
strengthen drugeducation and prevention programs for kids in the
northern Colorado farming community.

Improving drug programs is a topic that has gained nationwide
attention as illegal drug use rises among young people in both urban
centers and rural towns.

A nationwide study of drugprevention programs for children in
kindergarten through 12th grade showed that it's not enough to
encourage kids to "Just Say No" or to wear red ribbons during an
antidrug campaign.

Nor do scare tactics and "No Drug Zone" signs cut it in the fight
against drug use among children, said Linda Dusenbury, a research
psychologist and publichealth professor at Cornell University in New
York.

Kids need concrete strategies to combat peer pressure and their own
feelings of anxiety in the face of drug use, said Dusenbury, who
coordinated a study of drugprevention programs for Drug Strategies, a
nonprofit agency based in Washington, D.C.

The study, completed last summer, evaluated 47 drugeducation and
prevention programs used in schools throughout the United States.

Most effective are programs that teach kids to recognize when they
would be tempted to use illegal drugs then arm kids with the skills
to confidently resist the temptation, Dusenbury said in a telephone
interview.

How does that theory play out in a classroom? A teacher might ask her
students to describe a situation when they would feel pressured to use
drugs.

The teacher might then brainstorm with her students to devise
resistance strategies using humor, realistic excuses or suggestions
for alternate activities, for instance.

"Pull it from the classroom so it's very real and very meaningful to
kids," Dusenbury said.

To be effective, such an exercise should be followed by short and
straightforward roleplaying, she said.

Curiosity, boredom, anxiety and the desire to fit into a peer group
are the prime reasons young people experiment with drugs, the
researcher said.

Effective drugprevention programs also provide kids with alternative
ways to fulfill these normal urges, she said.

Further, the best programs debunk the myth that "everybody's doing
it." Called "normative education," this teaching method proves to
children that the minority not the majority of young people use
drugs.

"Most people do not use drugs. Most people kids respect do not use
drugs and do not think drugs are cool," Dusenbury said. Yet many kids
get the opposite message from drug programs, she added.

Drug education that works also involves parents and community programs
that engage kids on an ongoing basis.

"The one thing I've learned is how comprehensive our programs need to
be," Dusenbury said.

Oren Nero, Eaton Elementary School principal, said he and others will
take a close look at the effectiveness of the education and prevention
programs, which start in kindergarten. The school has not yet planned
any specific changes.

He said the school's students and teachers remain shaken by a drug
incident last week, when five young boys were caught during morning
recess smoking marijuana that they had rolled in homework paper.

The students are too young to face criminal charges in Colorado,
police said.

One of the youngsters got the pot from an older brother, who got it
from another high school student, school officials and police said.

Eaton Police Chief Rod Hawkins said his department is working with the
Weld County Drug Task force to identify the source of the marijuana.