Pubdate: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 Source: Winston-Salem Journal (NC) Copyright: 2005 Piedmont Publishing Co. Inc. Contact: http://www.journalnow.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/504 Note: The Journal does not publish letters from writers outside its daily home delivery circulation area. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States) FOR EVIDENCE THAT PREVENTION REALLY DOES PAYS OFF For evidence that prevention really does pays off in more ways than one, look no further than the grants totaling about $2.5 million that Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools has received to continue its efforts to reduce alcohol and drug use among students. The system got the money in large part because of the strong work it's already done. Now, school officials must use that money to work all the harder to keep more students clean and sober. School officials say they will use a $1.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to start more prevention programs based on research about how students use alcohol and drugs, the Journal's Danielle Deaver recently reported. The programs are needed, because about 64 percent of county seniors have used booze and 11.5 percent of eighth graders and seniors have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol while at school in the past year, according to a system survey. Still, officials say that fewer students here use alcohol on average than in the state or nation. They rightly want to reduce the numbers even more. The grant money should help them do so. Officials will use the money to hire six full-time prevention specialists and to introduce several new programs in middle schools and high schools. The second grant is for $800,000 and comes from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. It goes to the school system's random drug-testing program, which was a rarity in the country when it went systemwide in 1998. Understandably, some parents, especially those raised in the freedom-loving '60s, might be leery of such testing. But drugs wrecked lives then and continue to do so, and students are subject to the rules of parents and educators. The money from the Office of National Drug Control Policy will be used to expand the testing, and members of the school board plan to soon discuss the possibility of randomly testing students for steroids. The additional money might also make it possible to expand the pool of students tested for alcohol and drugs in general to include those who drive to school. As it is now, the system requires students who participate in extracurricular activities, such as clubs and athletics, to agree to be tested for drugs. Students who test positive must agree to drug treatment, or lose their extracurricular privileges. School officials must keep the testing program as unobtrusive as possible. And they need to find a way to get more students who test positive to enter treatment. During the six years that the system has had the program, there has never been a year when more than 52 percent of those students entered treatment. Yet the number of students testing positive during that time has dropped, from 4.6 percent in 1999-2000 to 2.9 percent in 2004-05. All in all, programs to prevent drug and alcohol abuse have paid off for the school system in more clean and sober students and in more grant money to continue the work in prevention. Now it's time to do just that. This is a job that doesn't end. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake