COSTA MESA : Blowout Marks End of DARE Program

The Pacific Amphitheater was rocking Thursday afternoon as 2,000 screaming sixth-graders from Costa Mesa and Newport Beach took over the open-air concert venue to celebrate completion of the 17-week Drug Abuse Resistance Education program.

“It teaches you everything,” said Justin Nowlin, a sixth-grader at Kaiser Elementary School in Costa Mesa. “It is really cool.”

Nowlin and the thousands of others who recently completed the program spent one hour per week for 17 weeks learning about illegal drugs, peer pressure and self-esteem. The classes are taught by police officers.

The students viewed videotapes that showed people snorting drugs. Marijuana and cocaine were even brought to the classroom so that the students could see them.

In order to graduate from the program, the students were required to write essays and learn about the dangers of drug use and how to resist peer pressure. The DARE fair, which was attended by teachers, police officers, and a smattering of parents and school administrators, is the reward for completing the program.

Program graduates were given white DARE T-shirts and green caps, which they asked police officers to autograph. They also got to pet Tommy the Newport Beach police dog. The climax of the event was an in-line skating exhibition during which professional skaters, accompanied by wild cheers from the students, performed jumps off of a large vertical ramp like those used by skateboarders.

Because of DARE, sixth-graders emerge from the program a bit more streetwise about drugs and are able to handle situations involving their peers, said Irvine Police Officer Bob Anderson, who helped organize the fair. Anderson said that most children 11 and 12 years of age are ready to learn about these things.

Nowlin, for example, said that though he has never tried marijuana, he knows plenty of older friends or classmates who have.

“I have one friend who is kind of a troublemaker. He tried pot once because he thought it was cool,” he said. “Now he can’t get off it.”

The DARE program has been implemented in most school districts by local police departments. In unincorporated areas, Orange County sheriff’s deputies teach a similar program called Drug Abuse is Life Abuse.