It's been 25 years since DEA agent Enrique Camarena was captured,
tortured and slain.

Camarena, the man we honor each year with Red Ribbon Week, was working
in Mexico, fighting a Mexican drug cartel.

The cartel won. A quarter-century later, they're still winning.

They're winning because Americans have to have their drugs. And as
long as there's a demand, the drug lords will find a way to make a
fortune meeting it.

It's been 25 years since I became a teacher. I've seen lots of
attempts at substance abuse prevention.

Former addicts have warned, "Don't be like me." Tragic films --
make-believe and real -- were created to shock. Posters of rotting
teeth, decaying skin and blackened lungs are displayed to disgust. The
defunct Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE, program, was
designed to educate.

But nothing has stopped kids from experimenting. And it doesn't take a
genius to know that when kids experiment, a lot of them will wind up
addicted -- and the demand will continue.

Maybe there's no answer.

Maybe human beings are just too soft. Too weak to fight off the
powerful urges that keep us doing stuff that makes no sense --
drinking and smoking, for instance.

Yet, despite a hundred bad things about them for every good, at least
alcohol and cigarettes can be bought legally.

They're poison, but they aren't being shadily sold behind closed
doors. Nobody is killing anyone over them. Safeway, 7-Eleven and
BevMo aren't having turf wars.

Proposition 19 failed, but Californians will find a way to get their
cannabis.

"Doctor, my (fill in body part) hurts. Could you please write me a
marijuana prescription? It really helps."

And Americans will continue to somehow -- legally or illegally -- get
the money they need so they can keep inhaling, snorting, swallowing
and injecting.

I get that.

What sickens me is that the growing demand for illegal drugs is making
evil people rich. What frightens me is that the pathetic dependence
has turned areas along our border into a war zone.

Since the Iraq war began, 4,430 American troops have perished. It has
been reported that more than half that number died in Mexico's Juarez
Valley last year.

Where's Juarez? Start in El Paso, Texas, and head south -- about 10
feet.

And the out-of-control-demand pushed a 20-year-old mother named
Marisol Valles Garcia into the unlikely position of police chief in
one of those drug cartel-infested Juarez Valley towns.

Have we given up? Did Camarena die for nothing?

Will the demand for narcotics ever shrink? Our only hope, or should I
say our kids' only hope, is the kids themselves. We have to find a way
to reduce their demand.

I have two plans.

1. Find the best, coolest, most likable high school kids who don't do
drugs and get drunk every weekend. (They're out there -- more than
you'd think.) Persuade them to talk to their slightly younger peers
about why they choose not to when so many other kids choose to.

When I was 15, I thought you either partied or sat home alone. I
needed proof that you could have an active, meaningful, non-nerdy
social life without getting drunk or high. To me, that message was
never sent. I want to change that.

Help me.

Next week: Plan two