Preventing Youth Drug Use

* Thank you for telling it like it is: “More Than Just Saying No” (editorial, Aug. 19). It’s high time policymakers and their advisors dared to go beyond DARE and SANE, two of the most widely used drug prevention programs.

With teen drug use doubling over the past year, Congress and the president need to hear loud and clear from (at least) concerned taxpayers that a business-as-usual prevention approach is not enough to deter youth involvement with alcohol and other drugs.

Proven and creative alcohol and other drug-control strategies aimed at both the pusher and the “pushover” must be utilized, similar to current tobacco and smoking control measures. Surely, our children (and our nation’s future) are worth the changes in the thinking and doing we must undertake.

RAY CHAVIRA

Latino Council on Alcohol

and Tobacco, Palmdale

* Today’s DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program provides students with much more than a “just say no” approach. Drug-prevention programs like DARE teach children--from kindergarten through high school--that popularity can be found in positive behavior, that belonging need not require them to abandon their values, that self-confidence and self-worth come from asserting themselves and resisting destructive temptations.

DARE focuses on topics such as personal safety, drug use and misuse, consequences of behavior, resisting peer pressure, building self-esteem, assertiveness training, managing stress without drugs, media images of drug use, role models and support systems. By getting the message from a street-wise police officer--one who knows how drugs and alcohol can destroy lives--kids take that message seriously.

DARE is only a supplement to traditional support systems, like families and churches. The program does not provide a lifetime inoculation from drug use; it does provide an important foundation on which to build and reinforce drug prevention efforts. The recent National Household Survey on Drug Abuse has shown a decline in the use of illicit drugs by 12- to 15-year-olds--the primary recipients of DARE since its inception.

GLENN LEVANT, President

DARE America Worldwide, L.A.