CITY REVOKES DARE FUNDING

A drug education program for Greeley school kids got dismissed when
the Greeley City Council voted recently to stop public funding for
Drug Abuse Resistance Education.

The decision came after Councilman Ed Phillipsen unearthed a
compilation of studies that show DARE does little to reduce drug and
alcohol abuse in young adults -- and might even make the problem worse.

DARE is designed to keep kids from experimenting with alcohol,
tobacco, marijuana and other drugs.

The city council on Tuesday voted 5-2 in favor of cutting the city's
$2,500 DARE contribution.

Council members Debbie Pilch and Don Feldhaus voted to keep the
funding. Mayor Tom Selders and council members Phillipsen, Pam
Shaddock, LeRoy Johnson and Carrol Martin agreed to take it out.

Their decision was partly because DARE organizers didn't respond to a
letter requesting that a DARE representative answer council questions
a budget hearing. Weld County DARE Inc. Executive Director Dennis
Humphreys said none of the city's correspondence indicated the council
had questions.

Humphreys might approach the council about the issue, he said Friday.
In the meantime, funding for DARE training in Greeley classrooms will
continue, even without help from the city, he said.

"One way or another, we'll have to come up with the money," Humphreys
said. "If I have to put it on my credit card, I will."

Weld County DARE spent about $8,000 on officer training, supplies and
T-shirts for classes taught in Greeley last year.

The Greeley Police Department is one of three law enforcement agencies
in Weld County that gets funding from Weld County DARE Inc. Uniformed
officers from the Greeley and Evans police and Weld County Sheriff's
office teach the classes.

One of DARE's benefits is that it builds relationships between police
and kids, said instructor Jim Henkel, a Greeley police officer.

"I've had bearded guys come up to me and say, 'You are officer Jim,
aren't you?' " Henkel said. "There's only one setting where I'm known
as officer Jim, and that's in DARE."

But questions about whether DARE is worthwhile are only part of the
reason Phillipsen pushed to cut funding. The city needs to take a
critical look at why the 2005 budget designates $550,729 for nonprofit
organizations when about $8 million worth of budget requests from city
departments weren't fulfilled, Phillipsen said. Martin and Phillipsen
voted against passage of Greeley's $193.9 million budget for 2005.

Both questioned why the city is giving to organizations such as DARE
and Promises for Children when city operations and projects didn't get
all the funding that departments requested.

Research, Results On DARE Mixed

Drug Abuse Resistance Education is designed to show kids how to say no
to alcohol, tobacco and street drugs.

But it's questionable whether DARE achieves that goal: Research and
reports on its effectiveness are mixed.

For example, the U.S. General Accounting Office found little
difference in illegal drug use among students who get DARE training
and those who don't. And the U.S. Surgeon General categorized DARE as
an "ineffective program."

On the other hand, research from the Institute for Health and Social
Policy at the University of Arkansas shows that the new DARE
curriculum offers promising results. DARE made changes after a spate
of research that showed the program was producing lackluster results.

Researchers in the University of Arkansas study found that
seventh-graders in six cities who took part in the new curriculum were
more likely to find using drugs socially inappropriate, were better at
refusing drugs and had fewer misconceptions about how many of their
peers use drugs.

Another report published in 2002 in the National Medical Association
said DARE students in Tennessee were significantly less likely to
smoke than ones who didn't get DARE training. Greeley police Sgt.
Steve Black, a former drug task-force investigator who supervises DARE
instructors, said studies can back almost any opinion on DARE.

"It's just one of those things with statistics," Black said. "You can
twist the numbers however you want."

Program Teaches Students To Turn Down Drugs and Alcoholl

Students in Drug Abuse Resistance Education courses can expect to
learn not only that alcohol can damage every organ in the body but how
to react if some older kid offers them a wine cooler.

The curriculum teaches kids how to choose friends wisely and turn down
offers to experiment with drugs, tobacco and alcohol.

DARE classes in Greeley and Evans include appearances by area high
school and college athletes who talk about how a drug and tobacco-free
lifestyle keeps them eligible for sports. At a recent DARE graduation
at Dos Rios Elementary School, Tanya Garcia, 34, of Greeley reflected
on what the program taught her daughter about tobacco risks.

"Her dad smokes and she said, 'Get rid of that,' " Garcia said. "She
preached to him, 'Dad, don't smoke; it causes cancer.' "

Last year, 1,309 Greeley-Evans School District 6 fifth-graders went
through DARE. Nationwide, more than 75 percent of school districts
have DARE, which was developed by Los Angeles police in 1983. Since
then, the curriculum has spread nationally and internationally,
reaching about 36 million school kids in 52 countries.