Abstinence programs such as DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) and HEAT (Help Encourage Awareness Training) have been influential in the way drug health education is delivered in schools.

This year though, the DARE program, administered by the RCMP, will run in only one, as-yet undetermined elementary school, after cuts to RCMP budgets. HEAT also looks as if it will take on a lower profile. Former organizer Kathy Morrison, who for several years "drug-proofed" schools using a high-energy troupe of teenage hip hop dancers and student basketball players as role models, appears to have left the Coast and has not responded to emails from the Coast Reporter.

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