At a recent truancy court hearing, Pct. 1 Judge Billy Ball decided to drug test all eight students present. "I'd been thinking about it," Ball said. "I wanted to see if there was a correlation. We didn't have a large group, so we decided to test them all."

The testing, performed by juvenile probation, yielded results that surprised the judge. "I was surprised 100 percent tested positive," he said. "I thought maybe half. Is this the basis of truancy? I don't know. But we will be doing more drug testing in the future."

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"lf you play sports, drugs will mess you up."

That's one reason Mason McCarty, an Anderson Elementary student and sports enthusiast, swears he'll never try drugs.

McCarty was one of more than 300 Lufkin ISD fifth-graders who solidified a promise to remain drug-free at a Drug Awareness and Resistance Education graduation ceremony held Friday at the Pitser Garrison Civic Center.

The students are the 33rd group to graduate from the DARE program, which graduates two groups per year. Officer Ben Vaughn of the Lufkin Police Department has led the program for the entire 17 years it has been offered in LISD.

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