LEG. PONDERS DRUG RESISTANCE EDUCATION

As plans to drop county police participation in the Drug Abuse
Resistance Education program in January or February of 2008 move
forward, the debate on how best to encourage abstinence of drugs and
alcohol - and address other health and safety issues - among Suffolk
County's student populations has entered a new phase.

At a recent meeting of the Suffolk County Legislature's Public Safety
Committee, in which a dozen county legislators sat in at various
points, lawmakers heard from DARE officials, Suffolk County Police
Department Commissioner Richard Dormer, several school districts and
representatives from HealthSmart - another drug prevention program
that also focuses on other issues young people face.

The discussion took place during a public hearing on a bill that would
require the county police to continue to participate in DARE. However,
the legislation, which was introduced by Legislator Cameron Alden
(R-Islip), was tabled by the committee, and the SCPD likely will go
forward with plans to replace DARE with the HealthSmart program.

As the debate has evolved, the issue has gone from whether DARE is
effective to whether a newer version of DARE may be more productive,
or whether the HealthSmart program is better constructed to encourage
long-term resistance to drug use and other health issues that plague
young people.

On hand last week were speakers from several school districts -
including Half Hollow Hills, South Huntington and Harborfields - who
spoke in favor of continuing DARE. "We have a stressed teacher
population, there are so many mandated activities," said Christine
Geed, vice president of the Half Hollow Hills Parent Teacher
Association. "HealthSmart is one more thing on their plate."

"We're doing our best as educators," said Frank Carasiti,
superintendent of schools at the Three Village School District. "But
we need the presence of professional law enforcement officers.
Students after a while feel comfortable around uniformed officers."

Others questioned the timing of the proposed changeover, which would
occur in the middle of the school year.

Having stated that DARE is ineffective and that he will be pulling
officers from the program in favor of a kindergarten through
12th-grade program known as HealthSmart, Dormer said that, under his
administration, police/student interface has grown. He cited the
Police Explorers program and the SCPD's Youth Academy, among other
programs, as examples of areas that have been beefed up or maintained.
"I want to reassure everybody that the police department is not
abandoning the kids," he said. "We're going to continue our presence,
with a program that supplements HealthSmart or some other program."

Dormer and others have based their conclusion about the
ineffectiveness of DARE at least in part on a 2003 Government
Accountability Office letter citing various studies of DARE, in which
"no significant differences in illicit drug use" was found between
students who received DARE instruction in fifth or sixth grade and
those who did not.

The police commissioner also cited a 2001 DARE Program Review Task
Force report, which found no credible evidence that DARE is effective.
Rather, the study suggested that life lessons are better taught over a
long period of time, and that DARE might actually produce a false
sense of security that children are going to be able to avoid drugs
over their entire school career.

By contrast, HealthSmart is a K-12 program that focuses on DARE issues
as part of a comprehensive program of health matters that include
tobacco, alcohol, drugs, diet, intentional and unintentional physical
injury, sexual behavior, and other issues like Internet safety,
bullying and gangs.

"HealthSmart actually works differently with children at each grade
level with attention to their developmental level - how they think,
what their relationship levels are, their level of independence," said
Martha Kahan, of the Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational
Services, which administers HealthSmart through the use of federal
tobacco settlement dollars. HealthSmart doesn't just give children
information or slogans, she said, but encourages students to develop
planned behaviors that can change norms among their peers, rather than
making them subject to negative peer pressure.

Ron Brogan, a representative of DARE, agreed that the effectiveness of
the original DARE program was not demonstrable. But he said that DARE
has been changed to include more grades, and provide additional areas
of topical coverage.

Criticism of the old DARE program, he said, is "a moot point. DARE can
offer K-4 now, not just fifth and sixth. And we offer booster shots in
the seventh and ninth grades. There's no silver bullet, but we have a
new DARE. The jury is still out on it, but we think it is the gold
standard."

"Maybe the DARE program shouldn't go on forever, but it should be
looked at," Alden added. "And it should be extended to the end of the
school year. The county executive ordered his [police] commissioner to
do away with it behind closed doors ... A decision like this is a
major change in public policy and the Legislature should be involved
in that kind of decision."