FOR EVIDENCE THAT PREVENTION REALLY DOES PAYS OFF

For evidence that prevention really does pays off in more ways than
one, look no further than the grants totaling about $2.5 million that
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools has received to continue its
efforts to reduce alcohol and drug use among students. The system got
the money in large part because of the strong work it's already done.
Now, school officials must use that money to work all the harder to
keep more students clean and sober.

School officials say they will use a $1.7 million grant from the U.S.
Department of Education to start more prevention programs based on
research about how students use alcohol and drugs, the Journal's
Danielle Deaver recently reported. The programs are needed, because
about 64 percent of county seniors have used booze and 11.5 percent of
eighth graders and seniors have been under the influence of drugs or
alcohol while at school in the past year, according to a system survey.

Still, officials say that fewer students here use alcohol on average
than in the state or nation. They rightly want to reduce the numbers
even more. The grant money should help them do so. Officials will use
the money to hire six full-time prevention specialists and to
introduce several new programs in middle schools and high schools.

The second grant is for $800,000 and comes from the Office of National
Drug Control Policy. It goes to the school system's random
drug-testing program, which was a rarity in the country when it went
systemwide in 1998. Understandably, some parents, especially those
raised in the freedom-loving '60s, might be leery of such testing. But
drugs wrecked lives then and continue to do so, and students are
subject to the rules of parents and educators.

The money from the Office of National Drug Control Policy will be used
to expand the testing, and members of the school board plan to soon
discuss the possibility of randomly testing students for steroids. The
additional money might also make it possible to expand the pool of
students tested for alcohol and drugs in general to include those who
drive to school. As it is now, the system requires students who
participate in extracurricular activities, such as clubs and
athletics, to agree to be tested for drugs. Students who test positive
must agree to drug treatment, or lose their extracurricular privileges.

School officials must keep the testing program as unobtrusive as
possible. And they need to find a way to get more students who test
positive to enter treatment. During the six years that the system has
had the program, there has never been a year when more than 52 percent
of those students entered treatment.

Yet the number of students testing positive during that time has
dropped, from 4.6 percent in 1999-2000 to 2.9 percent in 2004-05. All
in all, programs to prevent drug and alcohol abuse have paid off for
the school system in more clean and sober students and in more grant
money to continue the work in prevention. Now it's time to do just
that. This is a job that doesn't end.