Rocky wrong about DARE

It will take much more than bright orange flags to save the citizens of Salt Lake City from being run down by the personal and political agendas of Mayor Rocky Anderson.

The DARE program was trashed when Anderson decided the program was ineffective based on his selected research. There has been significant research conducted on the DARE program, and it has shown to be both a proven success or a failure depending on the location where the program is administered combined with the research group conducting the study.

Mayor Anderson has forwarded to the Salt Lake City Board of Education a list of what he considers effective prevention programs: Life Skills Training (LST), Students Taught Awareness and Resistance (STAR), and Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS)

In the spring of 1997, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) issued a brief guide to the prevention of drug use among children and adolescents and compared DARE to other school-based programs. DARE received higher ratings than LST and ATLAS. STAR was not rated.

Mayor Anderson's recent speech to the Shadow Convention revealed his bias and ignorance. The war on drugs has not yet failed as Anderson has so eloquently charged.

Anderson's call for less emphasis on tough prison sentences is like a call to reduce cancer treatment. How do we benefit the drug problem by ignoring a significant population involved in its furtherance?

Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, he should work to help design a comprehensive continuum that meets appropriate needs at each level. DARE should be an integral part of that continuum. Mayor Anderson has spent too much time defending the lawless.

Mark Nosack

Sandy