Laramie

Meth in Wyoming: Education
LaramieBoomarang.com

Laramie Police D.A.R.E. officer Erica Campbell

discusses the program with students

at Laramie Junior High School.

Meth is a hearty weed. It clings to the craggy places. Its roots stubbornly penetrate the community soil where the gardeners of police, social workers and prosecutors can’t constantly tend. It will wither when denied the nourishment of fresh users — or when a more noxious plant chokes it to death.

“I don’t know if there is anything we can do to the users and manufacturers who are set in their ways. The only way that we can help to curtail the use of methamphetamine is through education in the schools,” Albany County Under Sheriff John Fanning said.

Albany County children’s main source of education on crystal meth, and all drugs, is the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program. D.A.R.E. is taught in fifth-, sixth- and eighth-grade curriculums by the Laramie Police department. Erica Campbell is the LPD D.A.R.E. officer.

“Do I think it’s beneficial to touch on meth? Yeah, but it’s out of my hands,” Campbell said. “If you have a good base of how to make good decisions, though — you’re in the routine of getting facts — methamphetamines falls right in.”

Campbell said she trusts that children are smart enough to make the necessary connections between one drug and another.

At the lower level, D.A.R.E. focuses on simply telling kids about what drugs do and giving them facts about specifically what effects the drugs have on the body. The junior high curriculum focuses on decision-making and the ripple effect that both good and bad decisions have on communities.

The vast majority of fifth- and sixth-graders in Laramie have never heard of meth, Campbell said, which is promising for the community.

By the transitional years of junior high, knowledge is higher, but Campbell said that in her more than two years as a Laramie beat cop and her several months as the D.A.R.E. officer, she hasn’t come across school-age children using meth in Laramie, however. Eighth-graders have been exposed to Marijuana and alcohol, which are largely seen as precursors to meth, Campbell said.

Social worker Jane Warren said she has never met someone who was addicted to meth who didn’t have a previous drug or alcohol problem.

“We need to intervene earlier with prevention and education that is meaningful,” Warren said.

Whether the D.A.R.E. program is meaningful is difficult to quantify. Campbell said that prevention is both better than cure and tougher to statistically evaluate.

“Police officers don’t see when preventative stuff works. You give them the facts because that’s what they want. If you don’t give them a formal education, they’re going to get it somewhere else,” Campbell said. “Even if I can affect one kid this year, then, yes, D.A.R.E. worked,” Campbell said.

D.A.R.E. doesn’t use scare tactics, which just don’t work, Campbell said. Campbell also has to walk a fine line between thoroughly teaching students about drugs and giving them a primer on how to use them.

Understanding why people use drugs is more important than how, Warren said. Children grow up in a culture of consumption and immediate gratification, Warren said, and meth is a drug with an effect perfectly tailored to the X-Box generation.

Kids respond better to visual examples of a drug’s effect than internal examples, Warren said. (A photo of a stomata is better than an x-ray of lung damage when it comes to deterring smoking, for example.)

Wyoming’s “Extreme Meth Makeover” billboard series and D.A.R.E.’s factual presentations are on the right track. Providing kids with alternatives is also essential, Warren said.

“It all has to be there. If the education isn’t there, if the enforcement isn’t there, if the treatment isn’t there, then there’s a hole in the wheel,” Campbell said.

“It’s the responsibility of everybody, starting with the parents — if they are religious, the ministers, preachers and priests — teachers and law enforcement. It’s incumbent on all of us to raise children right. It’s always been that way,” Fanning said.

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