COUNTY ENDS DARE PROGRAM

Taylor McClure still remembers the pale faces, droopy eyes and
spotted skin of the crystal methamphetamine addicts Officer Scott
Herndon showed her at Madison Elementary School more than a year ago.

She graduated from her school's DARE program convinced: Stay away
from drugs if you don't want to end up like that.

"I just thought I don't want that happening to me or my friends,"
said McClure, a rising seventh-grader at Brown Summit Middle School.
"That was pretty scary."

But McClure's brother and hundreds of other fifth-graders throughout
the county won't participate this school year. The Guilford County
Sheriff's Office has joined other local law enforcement agencies in
ending the popular Drug Abuse Resistance Education in elementary schools.

Sheriff BJ Barnes said he needed to divert officers because county
commissioners would not approve additional funding for a new gang
intervention unit. Two former DARE officers will join the unit to
prevent gang activity in Guilford County Schools. A third officer
will help register sexual predators at the sheriff's office, Barnes said.

Barnes said the officers will keep their DARE certifications in case
more county funding revives the program next year.

"In the past I've been able to ask for resources, and the county's
been able to provide it and I didn't have to shift anyone," Barnes
said. "I hate it because some of the intervention that would have
been provided to fifth- and sixth-graders won't be there this year."

Greensboro and High Point police also pulled DARE from city schools
about five years ago, citing dwindling resources and concern about
the effectiveness of the curriculum.

"We didn't have any statistical data to show DARE really made a
difference as far as what we were doing," said Sgt. D.J. Davis of the
Greensboro Police Department.

State and national DARE representatives say the dropping of the
24-year-old program is not a widespread trend. Three out of four
school districts in the United States teach the curriculum, according
to the DARE America Web site.

"(Membership) does fluctuate," said Ralph Lochridge, director of
communications for the California-based organization. "The growth of
the program from 1983 just took off and grew and grew. It's reached a
point where it remains kind of steady."

The nonprofit implemented a more interactive curriculum in 2001.
Preliminary findings from a national study by the University of Akron
showed participating seventh-graders were more likely to have better
decision-making skills and were less likely to use alcohol,
marijuana, tobacco or inhalants than their peers.

Lee Guthrie, coordinator for the N.C. DARE training center, said he
challenges police officials who say they want to drop the program
because of ineffectiveness. Usually, they cite old or faulty
research, Guthrie said.

"If the school system tells me it's not effective, I'm really
concerned," he said. "If a law enforcement agency tells me it's not
effective, I say, 'How do you know?'"

Sgt. Rick Lawrence, who supervises county school resource officers
and is developing the gang prevention unit, said he sees dropping
DARE as a trade-off between maintaining a drug-fighting presence in
schools and addressing a new threat. In October, Lawrence hopes to
start tracking gang activity in schools and educating students,
teachers and parents on how to recognize it.

"It's getting down to the point of what do we sacrifice?" he said.
"We've got to deal with and react to these gangs."

Other programs, such as the Operation Safe County youth summer camp,
will fill in the drug abuse education gap, sheriff's officials said.

And parents at Madison Elementary could help educate students during
the school's health safety week, said Tracey McClure, Taylor's mother
and a PTA member.

"It's a really good program," McClure said. "I hate to see it go."