THIS IS A D.A.R.E. OUR KIDS SHOULD TAKE

Years ago, I lived in Nova Scotia. I was in Grade 4 when a RCMP
officer came to our school to teach us all about bicycle and
pedestrian safety.

The rules at our school were basic and fundamental. Take the bicycle
safety course and you could ride your bike to school. Don't take the
course and you don't ride your bike to school.

In giving this course, the diligent officer also taught us about what
to do if we came across bullets, a gun and so on and what to do.

He also told us what to do if we came across a needle and things that
looked liked pills, and drugs. It was this basic education that paid
off later on when summer arrived.

One of the kids on my block came across a needle one day. He wanted to
pick it up, but I told him not to. We told his parents, who phoned the
police. It turned out to be a drug needle, half full of speed.

I believe that this basic safety education could have been called the
early years of the DARE program. DARE stands for Drug Abuse Resistance
Education. I would like to share with you some invaluable
information.

DARE'S mission is to help kids resist drugs and violence, with an
immediate objective to deliver the program to every Grade 5 and 6
student in Canada.

The long-term objective is to provide the follow-up DARE program to
every student in junior and senior high school in Canada, providing
students a refresher course on the skills and attitude they developed
in the previous curriculum.

The following are eight reasons to consider DARE.

1. In Ontario alone, $11 billion each year is spent on the treatment
of drug- and alcohol-related programs.

2. The majority of all crime is related to drugs and
alcohol.

3. Schools and other community organizations must use their own
resources to deal with drug and alcohol issues.

4. One-quarter of all hospital beds in Ontario are used for drug- and
alcohol-related patients.

5. Significant sums of money are lost each year in reduced
productivity due to employee drug and alcohol problems.

6. Drug and alcohol abuse has become so prevalent that parents are
having difficulties coping with the problems that many of their
children face as a result of peer pressure.

7. The DARE program, fully implemented, will save countless lives and
personal tragedies (not to mention billions of dollars) as a result of
drug- and alcohol-related problems in Canada.

8. Helping kids you know to resist drugs and violence.

Tyler J. Moffitt

Safety advocate