NEXT Team

GET REAL: MISGUIDED DRUG POLICIES IGNORE COMMON SENSE

If you follow the word of Jesus, you know that alcohol makes a party
better. One of his greatest miracles was turning water into wine. This
point wasn't lost on Benjamin Franklin, who declared that beer was the
proof that God loved us.

Time changes, but human nature doesn't. Every generation discovers drugs
and other delinquent activities in one form or another, and every
government administration and PTA fears it as the next Satanic take over,
dismissing obvious patterns in our social development as evidence of
decaying national morals.

It shouldn't come as a total shock then that a new study by the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development has found that suburban
high-school students are just as likely as their urban counterparts to have
sex, smoke, drink and engage in illegal drug use.

Kids are kids wherever you go. Whether its bong hits in Bellevue or blunts
in Wallingford, teenagers like to get high and it's going to stay that way.
Drugs remain a constant, regardless of socioeconomic standing.

Different administrations approach the inevitable "drug epidemic" by
various resource-draining methods. The most infamous is D.A.R.E., created
in 1983 by Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates.

This national program places police officers into the unqualified role of
mental-health counselors and educators, teaching students they have "the
right to be happy" and they have "the right to say no!"

Unfortunately, D.A.R.E. fails to differentiate between the dangers of mild
drugs, like pot, and killers, like heroin. D.A.R.E. treats all drugs as
equals, which defies common sense and undermines the program's credibility
because it is offering inaccurate information.

The U.S. General Accounting Office reported, "There is little evidence so
far that [D.A.R.E. and other "resistance training" programs] have reduced
the use of drugs by adolescents." The Justice Department-sponsored study by
the Research Triangle Institute found that D.A.R.E. has a "limited to
essentially nonexistent effect on drug use." This may be one reason why so
many schools nationwide have dropped the D.A.R.E. program.

While millions of tax dollars and private contributions continue to pour in
to save the souls of America's children with misguided drug policies,
politicians and parents continue to ignore that they are barking up the
wrong tree: failure is failure. It's time to take a realistic approach to
drugs and the adolescent mind and accept experimentation instead of hiding
from it.

As long as drugs are taboo and sex is dirty, curious minds will be
intrigued; this is common knowledge. What's important is how parents and
authorities choose to handle this reality. If they continue to act shocked
that kids are having sex and getting high, they will continue to exhaust
tax money on worthless social programs and moral advertisements.

Parents can try to instill fear in their kids, but that only produces
resentment. It forces the partying spirit to go underground like a
Prohibition bootlegger. Kids will party and parents would do well to work
with it instead of essentially encouraging their kids to drive home drunk.

And according to the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development study, 71 percent of parents need to consider this at some point.

Our role models and leaders can serve as valuable reminders that drugs and
drinking aren't necessarily prerequisites for failure. Take our president,
for example. He's a functional human being and a born-again Christian,
despite his past cocaine abuse.

Free-spirited or loose cannon, teens are going to do what they want. It's a
reality we would do well to accept. Parents can only do their best to raise
their kids so they can make their own smart and safe decisions.

To see the complete study, go to
www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ewp_04.htm
(http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ewp_04.htm)