DARE REPETITION WORKS, OFFICER SAYS

WILBRAHAM - Drug Abuse Resistance Education programs are effective if they
are given repeatedly throughout a child's education, DARE officer Dennis
LaPlante tells parents.

They are ineffective if they are taught only in one grade, according to
LaPlante. Wilbraham has a strong DARE program, backed by the regional school
district, the town's selectmen and police chief, and students here receive
DARE education in grades three, five, seven and again in high school. In
addition, LaPlante runs five-week programs for adults.

"You are the strength of the program," LaPlante recently told the latest
group of participating parents.

Today's youth face a culture with aspects which promote drug use, according
to LaPlante. Television, for instance, has taught third-graders at Soule
Road School the names of "34 brands of beer," he said, citing an example of
what students have told him.

The same children knew only five brands of ice cream, he said. "We have to
teach kids to make good choices," LaPlante said. "We can't prepare the world
for our children so we have to prepare our children for the world." Parents
who attended a session on marijuana use learned that one of the worst
consequences of heavy marijuana use is a change in a student's attitudes.
"Your gifted student will become average, while your average student is just
about making the grade and your just about making the grade student is no
longer in the race," LaPlante said.

In other sessions over the five week parents' program, LaPlante discusses
the power of peer pressure, how to provide supervision during the teen-age
years and how to communicate around the issues of drug and alcohol abuse.