Letters to the Editor

Spotting the bad guys

Why is everyone so shocked at the recent school shootings (“Colorado gunman sexually assaulted hostages,” Nation, Sept. 28)?

With Drug Abuse Resistance Education’s army of 60,000 within 80 percent of our schools reduced to only 10,000 active D.A.R.E. officers, we will continue to see homegrown terrorism and violence in our schools in the news.

If our uniformed D.A.R.E. officers were on campus, these strangers would have been spotted beforehand. Also, our children would be trained to act and/or react in these high-stakes events, as well as in high-stress peer pressure group situations with drugs and gangs.

America doesn’t need money thrown at this issue or another agency within an agency formed at the taxpayers’ expense. America needs D.A.R.E.’s fully funded workforce reinstated. Like our freedoms, one doesn’t understand and appreciate D.A.R.E.’s prevention until its presence is gone.

President Bush’s Anti-Drug Control Policy Update: Because there is no prevention attached to this policy, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat and co-chair of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, probably inserted us into an obscure bill — perhaps a restored grant program at the very last moment — and since the amount will be so small, no one will notice or raise concern. And Karen Tandy, the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, has only pledged $900,000 to D.A.R.E. in fiscal year 2007.

Please stand by us, America.

TANYA HAZELTON

D.A.R.E.-America

Yorba Linda, Calif.

School modernization

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