Pubdate: Thu, 10 Sep 2015
Source: Daily Press, The (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Sun Media
Contact: http://www.timminspress.com/letters
Website: http://www.timminspress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1001
Author: Alan S. Hale
Page: A2

Education: Police officials hope to raise $8000 from cookie sales

DARE CAMPAIGN OFFERS REASON TO SMILE

Smiley-faced cookies are returning to local Tim Hortons coffee shops
next week to help raise money for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education
(DARE) program.

It is a program which members of the Timmins Police Service and
Ontario Provincial Police will once again be conducting with students
in local schools starting next week.

The Smile Cookie campaign has been a fundraising initiative in Timmins
since 2003, and in that time it has raised $160,000 for the DARE
program. This year, local police officials are hoping to raise another
$8,000 from cookie sales.

"We've been able to help thousands of kids with the money that we get
for this great initiative," said Const. Rick Lemieux, the Timmins
Police DARE officer. "The money is used to purchase the books, the
DARE T-shirts, and all the teaching supplies to make this program
above and beyond where it is in a lot of communities. In a lot of
other communities, it is difficult to get funding ... but these
cookies sell so much that we don't really have to do any other
fundraising."

Last year, the DARE program rolled out a new curriculum for Grade 8
students called Keeping it Real, which centres around teaching
students skills to weigh their decisions and consequences, rather than
just trying to scare them away from alcohol and drugs.

Lemieux said the new approach has been shown in other jurisdictions to
reduce the number of teens who begin using drugs by up to 44%.

"The older program focused on different types of drugs and studies
showed it didn't really have an impact," said Lemieux. "Students
already knew that the drugs were not good for them, but they needed
strategies on how to resist them. I love this new program because it
seems so effective.

"Are there still some who make bad choices? Of course, we can't get
through to everybody. But even ones who make poor decisions when I see
them later, they still remember what they learned but they just didn't
apply it."

The cookies will be on sale starting this Monday and will be available
all week.
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MAP posted-by: Matt