Fall 2003 Edition 

Drugs and DARE    Recent St. Anne's School 6th grade DARE graduation   Police Sgt. Robert Boyle is the program coordinator for D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) in Fair Lawn and the president of Fair Lawn's Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention.  He recently helped answer a few questions about them.   What Is D.A.R.E.? D.A.R.E. teaches kids how to recognize and resist the direct and subtle pressures that influence them to experiment with alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, drugs and other substances.   The D.A.R.E. program is usually introduced to children in the 5th or 6th grade. A specially trained officer comes into a school one day a week for seventeen weeks and teaches the children.  D.A.R.E. tries to prevent children from becoming involved in drug or alcohol abuse, (before they are exposed to them) by providing them with information about these substances as well as teaching them techniques to resist peer pressure to use these substances. It is a proactive approach, rather than waiting for the children to get in trouble first and then trying to help them after they are already on drugs.  The D.A.R.E. program is standard regardless of where it is taught. Children in Thailand get the same D.A.R.E. program that children in Fair Lawn do.   What Is Fair Lawn Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention? This prevention program operates under the auspices of Fair Lawn's Health Department.  We receive a $17,500 grant each year from the Governor's Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. The Alliance figures out how to spend it on local needs for substance abuse prevention programs. We fund Peer Mediation Groups at the High School, peer leadership groups at the Middle Schools, the Junior Citizen Police, partial funding for D.A.R.E., a smoking cessation program, a tobacco enforcement program aimed towards preventing the sale of cigarettes to minors and many other programs.  Members of the community are supposed to run the organization with police officers, educators, and public health officials serving as advisors.  Currently we are trying to recruit members from the PTO's as well as other organizations in town. We use the money to fund many good programs that would otherwise not receive funding or that would put an additional burden on the local taxpayer.    Do These Programs Help? Yes I think both programs help.   However, despite our best efforts a certain percentage of kids will get in trouble with drugs or alcohol.  When it comes to prevention there is no such thing as a 1.000 batting average.  Of course, even if there was no D.A.R.E. or Alliance, many kids wouldn't get in trouble.   But I think there is another group of kids who can go either way, they are the ones I think we have the most influence on.  But we don't consider any kid to be a lost cause and we'll do anything we can to help them.