SCHOOLS SHOULD REINSTATE DRUG ABUSE RESISTANCE EDUCATION

Kalamazoo County, it's time to wake up! Just as the events of Sept.
11, 2001, permanently changed our perspective on the world, so we
ought to be awakened to the alarming influence of today's "culture
terrorists." They are wealthy, they are smart and they are real.

A media tidal wave is drowning our kids. Television and movies are
dripping with violence, sex and alcohol. Nearly 61 percent of all
television programming contains violence. Seventy percent of all
prime-time programming depicts alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug use.
Alcohol manufacturers spend $2 billion annually, luring our kids to
"drink up."

The enemy isn't limited to television and movies. Today's music is
pounding home obscenities. Most of today's hits simply dish up
steaming helpings of vileness. All this streaming into our kids heads
for hours on end, while plugged into their iPods.

Wonder why our youth seem to be so violent? Video games encourage them
to commit deadly mayhem for "fun." Today's video game business is a
$7 billion a year industry. Even though the worst games are rated
"M" (for mature), our kids still play them. Games such as the Grand
Theft Auto series feature violence, gore, intense language and
suggestive themes.

Then there's the Internet, which brings the world to our doorstep and
into our living rooms and kids' bedrooms. One in five kids, ages
10-17, who regularly use the Internet, have received a sexual
solicitation while online.

Our kids watch more than 18,000 hours of television by the time they
graduate high school, 5,000 more hours than they spend in their 12
years of classes.

So what does this mean for us in Kalamazoo County? Just look at the
recent drug deaths in Portage or the violence involving our youth.

Parents, schools, communities and law enforcement must wake up, step
up and say, "enough!" Enough kids have died and enough lives have
been ruined. We're NOT giving our kids over to the culture terrorists
to raise any longer!

Most parents I have spoken with are unaware that since 1999, every
school district and law enforcement agency in Kalamazoo County -- with
the exception of the Parchment School District and the Charter
Township of Kalamazoo Police Department -- has discontinued the most
well known and well respected drug and violence prevention program in
the United States, if not the world.

I'm talking about the Drug Abuse Resistance Education
program.

Maybe the lives of the young people who were lost to drugs and
violence could have been saved if only the schools and law enforcement
would have made D.A.R.E. a priority in their budgets. D.A.R.E. is not
a "silver bullet," but it is worth taking a second look at a new
D.A.R.E. program.

Thanks to a generous $13 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation and in cooperation with the University of Akron Institute
for Health and Social Policy, the new millennium has seen the
development of a new D.A.R.E. program, which is now in 75 percent of
all school districts across the United States and in 43 countries
around the world.

The program is available for students in grades K-12, with emphasis on
the fifth-, seventh- and ninth-grade levels. The new focus is on the
abuse of gateway drugs -- tobacco, marijuana, alcohol and inhalants.
These gateway drugs lead to "harder drugs" such as cocaine, heroin
and methamphetamine.

The program is equipped with the latest science-based prevention
learning components. It provides curricula that actively engage
students in innovative learning. All lessons are student-directed and
help students practice decision-making and refusal skills in a variety
of contexts.

The program promotes media literacy by practicing skills that focus on
understanding media motives, warning labels and truthful
advertising.

It also builds on the healthy relationship law enforcement has always
enjoyed in our schools.

School districts and law enforcement agencies across the country are
once again embracing the attributes of the new D.A.R.E. program.
They're coming home to a trusted friend and a proven drug and violence
prevention program.

In Duluth, Minn., two years after the city axed D.A.R.E., the new
program is back in Duluth schools. Officials admitted that cutting
D.A.R.E. was like "turning up the car radio to drown out a clunking
sound from the engine. It's easy to ignore a symptom, while a
full-blown emergency down the road can be far more costly."

Over the 25 years that D.A.R.E. has been in existence, its critics
have said D.A.R.E. doesn't work. The design of the new D.A.R.E.
program focuses on decision-making skills. Its success lies with the
students' choice to use the resistance skills they have been taught or
not to use them. Just like any other subject they learn in school,
they can choose to use the skill or discard it.

Life is full of choices and decisions. Let's give our kids another
tool in the life toolbox. Let's give them back the D.A.R.E. program!

Contact your local school district and find out why D.A.R.E. was
discontinued and how it can be reinstated. We have to take action
against the culture terrorists before another child becomes a
statistic. Just as the D.A.R.E. triangle states: "School-Parents-Police,"
it takes all three to keep our kids safe, drug- and violence-free.
This is a fight to save our youth!