STUDENTS’ TOP ANTI-DRUG POSTERS READY FOR DISPLAY

The 15 award-winning posters by students that go on display Thursday at the Laguna Art Museum’s South Coast Plaza mall site have a charming simplicity.

But the subject matter is a serious one: The extent of today’s drug-use culture on the grade-school as well as high-school student population.

Using the theme, “Drug Free--The Choice of a New Generation,” this year’s countywide Drug Abuse Prevention Poster Contest is the fourth in a series that organizers say is the first of its kind in the state.

“It’s a way of reaching students and to make them aware of the problems associated with drug use. It’s a way of reaching even the youngest (first-graders) long before they have to confront the drug culture,” said prevention-project coordinator Linda Paire of the Orange County Drug Abuse Services Program, chief organizer of the contest.

Paire said 1,000 copies of each of the five first-prize posters are being printed for nationwide distribution. “It’s a great way for these students to see their posters shown in the state capital and even Washington,” she said, noting that Nancy Reagan, a leading advocate of drug-abuse prevention, will again be a key recipient.

The posters will be on view through June 2 in the Children’s Corner of the museum’s mall site. Award winners are to be honored Thursday at a 6 to 8 p.m. reception.

Open to grades one through 12 and to media from watercolors to pen-and-ink, this year’s contest drew 1,650 contestants from 95 public and private schools. The five $100 first-place winners, Paire said, represent the range in overall moods, from the graphic and informative to the freely poetic:

--Jennifer Donlin, third-grader at Yorba Linda’s Rose Drive School, depicts three girls turning aside an offer of drugs from a seller at a street-corner booth.

--Katie Shields, St. Bonaventure School sixth-grader in Huntington Beach, shows a downtown scene of people--symbolizing a drug-free society--streaming from a modernistic backdrop of office towers.

--Jason Miller, Serrano Intermediate School eighth-grader in El Toro, has a drug-free runner wearing a “No. 1” insignia and crossing the finish line the winner.

--Geoff Tuttle, a Trabuco Hills High School sophomore in Mission Viejo, uses a drug-free theme of a youth who has let butterflies soar in the air.

--Mary Kim, junior at Fullerton’s Sunny Hills High School, displays drug-free students in various academic, sports and other campus activities.

Among the other posters, two of the starkest are by second-prize winners. Wing Chen, a Los Alamitos High School sophomore, depicts a drug victim with a hypodermic needle who is manacled by handcuffs. Dan Whipple, a Trabuco Hills High School sophomore, shows a robot’s hands dumping pills and hypodermic needles into the garbage.

The youngest poster artist is Bryan Watkins, first-grader at Cypress’ Arnold School, whose collage contrasts drug-free achievements with drug-affected devastation.

The Orange County Drug Abuse Services Program, which launched the poster contest in 1983, operates rehabilitation centers and is affiliated with the 32-organization Substance Abuse Prevention Network and various parent groups. Among the contest co-sponsors is the Orange County Department of Education.

Several artists were among the contest’s 35 jurors, including UC Irvine’s Tony DeLap, Chapman College’s Richard Turner and Orange County Art Alliance’s Hal Pastorius.