SAME DRUG WAR, DIFFERENT TOOLS

New Programs, Not Just The Well-Known DARE Program, Teach Drug
Education To Your Kids

Second of a two-part series

Colleen Fitzgibbons fidgets uncomfortably as her friends try to
convince her to take a drag from a cigarette. The 12-year-old knows
she has a tough choice to make. ''If I do smoke the cigarettes, maybe
I'll still have friends and they won't make fun of me,'' she said.
''If I don't, maybe I won't get sick.''

The scene isn't unfolding behind a friend's house or in the mall
parking lot, but inside Norwell Middle School.

Colleen and her sixth-grade classmates are acting out a scenario they
might one day find themselves in and are practicing what to do and
say when that time comes.

It's all part of drug education in Norwell.

Through the years, educators across the country have supplied
students with reams of data about the dangers of substance abuse.
They've brought in guest speakers to provide first-hand testimony
about how drugs ruin lives. Cops have joined the fight, daring kids
to ''resist drugs and violence.''

Despite those efforts, about half of all U.S. students still dabble
in drugs by the time they graduate from high school - a number
roughly the same as it was 30 years ago.

With that in mind, The Patriot Ledger sought to learn more about how
and what South Shore schools are teaching kids about drugs, and to
examine whether programs in place today might produce better results
than in the past.

A different approach

Not all that long ago, drug education basically meant spewing facts
at kids and hoping information about the risks of cigarettes, pot,
cocaine and other substances scared them off.

''They thought if they could teach kids enough about how a substance
works and how it damages the system, the kids were going to have
enough sense not to try them,'' said Edward Smith of the Prevention
Research Center at Penn State. ''That's not where kids are.''

As evidence piled up showing the programs weren't getting through to
kids, educators and researchers began adapting their approach.

Today, kids are still given lots of information, but a new generation
of drug education programs tends to focus on decision-making skills
and coping with peer pressure. Old-style lecturing has been replaced
with role playing and open discussion.

Exactly what programs are in place south of Boston varies from
district to district and grade to grade.

Half of South Shore towns, for example, still use DARE, the antidrug
program delivered by uniformed cops, as part of their substance abuse
education curriculum.

Some towns, including Norwell, Braintree and Milton, use other
nationally developed programs.

Still other communities, like Cohasset, create their own curriculum.

'Exemplary' program

No one expects lessons taught in schools to wipe out drug use among teens.

Experts who have studied the issue say, however, the right curriculum
delivered the right way can chip away at the number of students who
get mixed up with drugs and push back the time when others start experimenting.

To that end, the federal government compiled a list of nine
''exemplary'' programs that ''have proved their effectiveness when
judged against rigorous criteria.''

Among those is LifeSkills Training, the program in place in Norwell
that Colleen Fitzgibbons and her friends were being taught one
afternoon last month.

National Health Promotion Associates, the New York company that
distributes LifeSkills, claims it has been proven to reduce the
prevalence of tobacco, alcohol and illicit drug use by as much as 87 percent.

Norwell uses the course in grades 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8, and also invites
in outside speakers like Eric Nardone. Nardone is still in physical,
occupational and speech rehabilitation programs 20 years being
injured in the crash of a car driven by a friend who was drinking.

LifeSkills doesn't just deal with drug resistance, but with the
broader issues of self image and social skills, because what kids
think of themselves and how they interact with others are known to
affect drug use.

The curriculum also addresses ''social norms.'' In layman's terms,
that means getting kids to understand that not everybody does drugs.

On the recent afternoon in Norwell, Missy Gerety, the district's
director of social health, asked sixth-graders what percentage of
teenagers they thought smoked at least once a month.

The answers came in rapid succession: 70 percent. 55. 30.

Many were surprised when Gerety gave the real answer: 26 percent.

''You used to think a lot of people smoke,'' she told the class.
''Now I think you know only a few people smoke, either teenager or adult.''

Getting interactive

While individual programs must be studied and scrutinized to
determine if they work, experts say there are typically a few traits
common to successful drug resistance courses.

For starters, nearly all agree substance abuse education has to be
interactive to make the message stick.

In Cohasset, where drug education is part of the district-developed
health curriculum, that goal is achieved through a variety of activities.

Students may be asked, for example, to interview people in the
community about how alcohol impacts lives. In other cases, kids bring
in beer commercials and dissect them.

''Whether it's the Coors twins or the Budweiser frogs, kids begin to
realize that they are being targeted,'' said Michael Gill, the
assistant principal at Cohasset Middle High School and an adjunct
professor of health education at Cambridge College. ''Why are they
targeting you? They're not stupid. They're spending $2 billion a year
to advertise to you knowing you are going to be sucked in ... and
you'll be purchasing that product for the rest of your life.

''The trick to the curriculum is getting the kids to figure that out.''

Other towns use different techniques to draw kids in.

Canton High students are sometimes assigned to research a certain
drug, then teach classmates about it.

Milton, Stoughton and several other South Shore school districts use
Project Alert, one of the nine drug education programs deemed
''exemplary'' by the federal government. That program uses role
playing exercises, games, videos and other methods to get its message
across to a middle school audience.

K-12 curriculum

Beyond interactivity, experts say drug education can't be taught in
one grade and then ignored.

''This should not be a one-shot deal,'' Smith, the Penn State
researcher, said. ''I would argue it can begin in elementary. They
should start at the minimum in middle school and build in some time
to support it in high school.''

That doesn't mean introducing 5-year-olds to information about heroin
and other hard-core drugs.

Drug education in Canton kindergarten classes means talking about
what's inside a medicine cabinet and why it's not safe to touch those
drugs, said Karen Costa, the district's wellness coordinator.

Most school districts begin talking about tobacco, alcohol and
marijuana, typically considered the gateway drugs, later in
elementary school. Discussions get more in depth as time goes by.

By high school, drugs like heroin and OxyContin enter the curriculum.
Students learn about the health risks associated with the substances,
and also how drug use can affect everything from financial aid for
college to job prospects.

Keeping information current and relevant is key, educators said.

''That is one area where you always have to get the up-to-date, brand
new, most recent information because from year to year the popular
drug does change,'' said Anne Fagan, the head of health and physical
education in Milton. ''Right now heroin might be the big thing, or
some of the over-the-counter medicines, or the date rape drugs.
Through the Internet, through our own investigation, we try to get
the most current information to deliver to our students.''

Looking ahead

Despite all that effort and endless attempts to improve programs,
drugs are still very much a part of youth.

In 2003, 47 percent of Massachusetts high school students reported
using an illegal drug in their lifetimes, with marijuana being the
substance of choice. Thirty-two percent said they had been offered,
sold or given a drug on school property.

Will those numbers ever decrease?

There's no way to know for sure, but experts like J. David Hawkins,
an endowed professor of prevention at the University of Washington,
say strides could be made if more schools implemented programs that
have been researched and scientifically shown to work, such as LifeSkills.

Others, like Rodney Skager, a professor emeritus of the Graduate
School of Education and Information Studies at the University of
California-Los Angeles, say it's unrealistic to expect drug use to
drop substantially.

Instead, he said, the goal should be to delay the start of use and
minimize harms.

''The classic example would be - and this is at a college level - the
kid who passes out from alcohol and everybody leaves him to sleep it
off,'' he said. ''It's not hard to teach them what the signs are of
alcohol poisoning.''

As for local health educators, they would no doubt like to see drug
use decline, but even in light of the current numbers, they insist
substance abuse education has not been a failure.

''If you help one student make a good decision, then we've been
successful,'' Costa said.