DARE DOESN'T WORK, KEEP COPS OUT OF SCHOOLS

Re: "Community resource officers connecting with students" Oct. 9, Airdrie
City View

Dear editor,

Prohibitionists are like religious fanatics: Despite all fact,
history, science, and common sense proving their failure, they still
believe they are doing the right thing.

Since Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) was started in the '80s,
drug use among teens has quadrupled. That tells me that lying and
frightening kids is a counterproductive method of reducing their
interest in drugs. The studies done on DARE's effectiveness supports
this.

If teachers and parents had any guts or sense at all they would resent
the very idea that cops are better at teaching kids about drugs than,
say, nurses.

It should be illegal to frighten and mislead kids, but we send cops in
to schools to do it. It is absolutely beneath contempt, the most
reprehensible form of indoctrination we have in our society.

My only consolation is that more and more people of all ages are
seeing the police's love of drug prohibition for the
budget-and-power-grabbing scam that it is.

For those keen on teaching kids about drugs without all the hyperbole,
spin, sloganeering, and baldfaced lies of the standard education
programs, I recommend the Canadian Students For Sensible Drug Policy
website at http://www.cssdp.org, the Educators For Sensible Drug Policy
website at http://www.efsdp.org , or the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
website at http://www.leap.cc .

RUSSELL BARTH, Nepean, Ontario