DRUG-RELATED REFORM

Re: "Educators put to test on Red Ribbon Week," Monday Metro story.

I agree with Arlington parent Maureen Maidlow, who said teachers
shouldn't offer too much information. We want to encourage drug-free
behavior, not awaken students' curiosity. Scare tactics and fear don't
work as well as truth, trust and reason.

Based on a 2003 study by addiction researchers at the State University
of New York at Buffalo, alcohol use makes domestic violence eight
times more likely. Marijuana use does not.

The idea of "inoculating" children against future drug use with
elementary school programs - such as the police-based Drug Abuse
Resistance Education (DARE) or the science-based anti-drug curricula
now available from the federal government - may be having an adverse
effect.

Current policy destroys families and everything America once stood
for. Children of alcoholics suffer abuse and neglect. What about all
the victims of fetal alcohol syndrome who fill our prisons?
Methamphetamine is the latest smokescreen to take our eyes off the
killer drugs we tolerate.

Drugs kill over 26 percent of the people who die each year in the U.S.
Tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals kill about a quarter of us. Less
than 1 percent die from all illicit drug use. And none, nada, not one
single death is attributed to marijuana. Clearly, we are all safer to
grow natural herb gardens.

Colleen Minter, Stephenville