Pubdate: Thu, 27 Feb 2014
Source: Journal-Pioneer, The (CN PI)
Copyright: 2014 Journal-Pioneer
Contact:  http://www.journalpioneer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2789
Author: Mike Carson
Page: A3

DARE PROGRAM WILL CONTINUE IN ISLAND SCHOOLS FOR NOW

SUMMERSIDE - An RCMP program on drug abuse education in Island schools
will continue.

RCMP Sgt. Andrew Blackadar, media relations officer for L Division,
said the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program is being
looked at to see if an alternative can be developed for Island schools.

"We're re-evaluating the DARE program," he said. "We will be, at some
point, replacing it with some other drug awareness program."

Blackadar said DARE is not an RCMP program and actually comes from the
United States.

"One of the requirements of that program is that it be delivered by a
front-line uniformed police officer," he said. "Each class requires 10
hours of in-class study.

"The challenge we have around that is we are tying up a uniformed
police officer to get into the school for a commitment of 10 hours for
every class that he or she teaches. That takes a lot of time away from
our police officers on the street."

Blackadar said the other challenge is weather, particularly snow
days.

"If we decide to go into schools for the first 10 weeks of the year
and four of those weeks happen to hit snow days, we're then cutting
into the curriculum of the school," he said.

Blackadar said the RCMP has been providing the DARE program for the
last 15 years and it is time that it changed.

"We want to make sure, and that's where the re-evaluation of the
program is coming in, we see some long-term change," he said.

"We're seeing a lot more prescription pill abuse here compared to
where we were back 15 years ago. The change in mindset of marijuana
use, that's another change.

"We want to re-evaluate and get a program that is current with the
times but also something we can say is RCMP owned. We could tailor it
if one school or one area is having an issue with prescription pills,
we want to be able to go in and hit that school hard with prescription
pill information."

Another change in the program would be the use of people other than
uniformed officers. "We've done this with other things, we may bring
in a drug addict," he said. "That's separate from the DARE program.
Or, we may bring in anybody whose recovering, we've brought in doctors
to get the medical side."

Blackadar said more needs to be done at the high school
level.

"We can target them for one or two days which would only take us two
hours to do," he said. "We're really doing DARE from Grade 5 to Grade
9 right now and we don't have a lot of programming for high school
kids who are really still very much at risk."

Parental involvement is another aspect to a drug awareness program
that needs to be addressed, he said.

"The other thing we want to do is we realize that one component that
we're missing in all of this is getting the parents involved,"
Blackadar said.

"You have parents of teenagers, be it in junior high school or high
school, and they may not know the signs they should be looking for.
They don't know who to turn to. They may have certain questions they
would just like answered. We can bring in certain experts from certain
fields so we can have a panel discussion instead of having one police
officer give the program. We might have a panel of four or five
experts saying here's what you do."

He said dealing with drug issues doesn't always end up in a
courtroom.

"A parent might say I found marijuana in my kid's bedroom yesterday
and I just left it there because I didn't know what to do with it," he
said. "I thought I'd get my kid in trouble or I though I'd get me in
trouble if I called the police. We can actually say take the steps,
give us a call, have that chat with your kid.

"Your kid doesn't even have to know that the police were even involved
at this point. That's step one. Or, we have programs that area
available to help your child and help you. That's step two. We don't
have to go to the court process right away."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt