SANTA ANA : Anti-Drugs Booklet Available in Spanish

Ten-year-old Elizabeth Magallon knows that taking drugs can harm or even kill her, and she is learning how to say no to drugs in her classroom at Franklin Elementary School. What’s unusual about the brand-new booklet she is reading is that it is written in Spanish.

Her classmate Evangelina Casillas, 10, said the booklet is special to her because it is written in Spanish and she will learn more about drug abuse in her first language.

The first Spanish-language anti-drug curriculum in Orange County, Positivamente CoNOce las Drogas, will target the 26,000 students in Santa Ana who speak Spanish. Its English counterpart, Positively kNOw Drugs, was provided to more than 300,000 of Orange County’s fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders in 1990.

“Children are being confronted with drugs at age 5 and 6,” said Drug Abuse Is Life Abuse Executive Director Julie Holt. “We’ve learned from experts that if we wait until junior high school it’s already too late. They’ve already developed their attitudes toward drugs.”

At the Spanish program’s kickoff Thursday, Deputy Sheriff Gary Tinoco asked Franklin’s students in Spanish and in English for their help in the war on drugs.

“A drug is something which changes your way of acting and of thinking,” Tinoco said in Spanish. “It makes you crazy. . . . Drug use is life abuse.”

He asked them in Spanish and then in English what they would say to someone who offered them drugs.

“No!” they yelled.

“This is a benchmark day,” said Santa Ana Unified School District Supt. Rudy M. Castruita. “For the first time in this county we are able to read about drug abuse in a language other than English. For students who come to Santa Ana not speaking English, this gives them the opportunity to read this booklet.”

Santa Ana drug education officer John Reed has used other materials to teach children at Franklin about the consequences of drug use, but he said it was difficult to answer their questions about how to recognize drugs. With the new booklet he can easily show them what to avoid.

“Now it’s easy for them to understand what marijuana is and what it looks like,” in addition to knowing its effects on the body, Reed said.

Holt said the program will be made available free to any school in Orange County that wants it.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department will distribute the booklets in unincorporated areas and contract cities. Founded in 1986 by Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates, Drug Abuse Is Life Abuse is a nonprofit organization financially supported by its 32 board members and private donations from the community.