Assignment #10 Reducing Drugs in Schools

In my opinion schools need to provide more than just a D.A.R.E. program or one drug prevention session during certain grades as the course of action to reduce drug use. I remember going through the D.A.R.E. program when I was in elementary school and I can't tell you anything about drugs that I remember other than to say no and that drugs are bad. In middle school and high school the situation wasn't much different. I think schools should make their message about drug education hit a little closer to home. I think they message needs to be harsher in reality than it is. In elementary school they teach you that drugs are bad and they do bad things to your body and that they make you make bad decisions. This is all well and good but it would be much more effective if you made the information a little more detailed. If you told a 3rd grader that one cigarette will take away 11 mins off of your life and then tell them that one pack is approximately 220 mins which is evuivilant to a little over 3 and 1/2 hours and then you tell that people who smoke a pack a day (approximately 20 cigarettes) they will lose approximately 55 days off of their life in just one year. Now, given this information about cigarettes which are legal at the age of eighteen, and apply the same style of deliverance with all of the other legal and illegal drugs that can be abused and I think the rate of drug abuse will go down once our youth discover the physical, emotional, and psychological damage they cause on not only themselves but their friends and families.