ANTI-DRUG PROGRAM DEBATED

More Important Than A Mere Election:

Drugs in our schools.

Did you know this? Cocaine on the North Shore is cheaper than
beer.

It costs less for a party of teenagers to get a hit from cocaine --
$20 worth cut into four lines, or rows, to be snorted -- than to buy a
couple of dozen beers. (It seems that safer places don't pay the
"danger premium.")

And know this? West Vancouver's optional, police-delivered DARE (Drug
Abuse Resistance Education) program is the most extensive in Canada,
open to students in Grades 5, 7 and 8, and is free to the school board.

And last week members of the youth advisory council told West Van
Police Board what they thought of it.

"They (secondary school students) feel it's a laugh," one girl
declared. "It just wasn't effective. ... We find it funny. I know it's
sad to say that."

Another: "It's really patronizing."

Calmly, another described a girl she'd once been best friends with,
and now feels unable to help: "She's so thin I know she's on something."

A reminder: The famous Generation Gap keeps broadening. It isn't just
between old and young, between parents and children, but between
children and children. These kids were mostly in Grades 11 and 12 --
short but cool years older than the youngsters targeted by DARE.

One student declared that the "old" DARE program warned about alcohol,
tobacco and marijuana. Kid stuff, she implied. Now DARE should focus
on cocaine, ecstasy and newer drugs.

Yet another, with a stab of youthful defiance-cum-plea: "You can't
just tell us to say 'no' any more. We need the information to make an
educated choice. Tell us why to say no."

The board looked properly grave. Police Chief Grant Churchill
described the police point of reference: When drug traffickers are
arrested, others are "more than willing" to step into their place.

Yes, think of rising to the task of discouraging drug use in a society
where, as DARE counsellor Constable Scott Findlay noted in a later
interview, even movies rated PG (parental guidance) show hip drug use.
Where celebs do it. Where rock musicians do it. Where only the uncool
don't do it.

And, as Elizabeth Fry Society executive David Stevenson (night job,
chairman of the WV school board) has told me, where some parents not
only condone drugs but lay them out for their kids' parties.

I admire Scott Findlay for gamely defending DARE, for recognizing both
its successes and its built-in limitations -- it's not a drug
prevention program per se, it's an education program that hopes to be
"an inoculation," and "it can't have a five-year impression" that
lingers on for the older kids. If it could be expanded to the higher
grades, a possibility Chief Churchill said the force is working on,
Findlay would strongly favour that.

But -- have you heard this before? -- it all begins with parents. Said
Findlay: "We can't expect any agency to take responsibility to combat
this huge, international scourge." Right.