D.A.R.E. PROGRAM CUT BACK STATEWIDE

Anti-Drug Lessons Trimmed As Budget Cuts Move Officers Back To The
Road

Two deputies who taught anti-drug lessons in Knox County schools are
absent this academic year because they've moved from the classroom to
the road.

Sheriff David Barber wrote a letter to district superintendents this
month, saying he regrets ending the D.A.R.E. program for the 2009-10
school year. Barber explained that he has reassigned Deputies Scott
Baker and Chuck Statler because of unexpected budget cuts by county
commissioners.

Mount Vernon Superintendent Steve Short received Barber's letter
before classes resumed Aug. 21.

Fifth-graders in Short's district will miss out on anti-drug talks
and getting to know a uniformed deputy, who used to break the ice by
visiting the school playground.

"I think there's always disappointment when something that you're
used to isn't there anymore," Short said. "The teachers are adapting,
and I'm sure that some of the things that were taught (through
D.A.R.E.) can be incorporated into what they do."

D.A.R.E -- Drug Abuse Resistance Education -- has been taught widely
in Ohio classrooms since the late 1980s. But at least 30 of Ohio's 88
county sheriffs have ended their D.A.R.E. programs during the past
few years, mainly because of funding cuts, said Bob Cornwell,
director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association.

Sheriffs in Ashland, Knox and Putnam counties recently announced that
they can no longer afford to staff the program.

The poor economy also has some city police chiefs putting D.A.R.E. on
the back burner this year, said Lloyd Bratz, a regional director for
D.A.R.E. America. Others maintained the program by shrinking the
number of D.A.R.E. officers or by offering the program only to
elementary-age students.

Ashland County Sheriff E. Wayne Risner switched his only D.A.R.E.
deputy to corrections after his operating budget was reduced this
year by $712,000. And in Putnam County, the sheriff's lone D.A.R.E.
deputy retired to avoid being laid off.

"We never like to see the program suspended and certainly not
eliminated," Bratz said. "We always have that hope that they'll bring
it back."

A Drug Use Prevention Grant offered by the Ohio attorney general's
office might help. More than 200 law-enforcement agencies have
applied for roughly $3.6million in state funds generated mostly by
license-reinstatement fees paid by those charged with drunken
driving. The grant was expanded this year to include school-resource
officers and covers half of the time that officers spend on
drug-prevention work.

Budget problems made Morrow County Sheriff Steven R. Brenneman cut
D.A.R.E. a few years ago. He said he would have liked to save it
because it's a good prevention tool.

"There are studies out there that said that it didn't work, that kids
still used drugs," Brenneman said. "What it doesn't measure is the
relationships that are built between the kids and those officers."

Several research studies of D.A.R.E.'s effectiveness have concluded
that the program, on its own, is not very effective in preventing
substance abuse, said Dr. Kevin Conway, deputy division director at
the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"I think that these programs are done with the best of intentions,
but the only way to really test those intentions is to do rigorous
scientific evaluation," Conway said. "Because people want to do good,
they believe that what they've done has a positive effect."

Cpl. Zach Scott, one of nine D.A.R.E. officers at the Franklin County
sheriff's office, said most studies don't take into account the
letters that students write or comments they share on how an
officer's advice kept them out of trouble.

"If a cop is somewhat nurturing and able to give them some good
direction," Scott said, "they don't ever forget that."