DARE program extending to teens

With the drug situation mounting in Alberta, Black Diamond’s newest DARE instructor is desperate to connect with youth.

Black Diamond Peace Officer Jim Berry received training as a new DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) instruction officer at the Ontario Police College last month to give youth the skills needed to avoid involvement in drugs, gangs and violence in a 36-year-old police-led series of classroom lessons that began in Los Angeles.

Berry is among the first officers in Canada to be introduced to DARE’s new opioid and prescription drug prevention curriculum that targets elementary, middle and high school students in response to the opioid crisis - information he’s sharing with Okotoks DARE officer Melanie Glanville.

“They go pretty much into all different opioids,” said Berry of the program. “What they’re finding in their statistics is kids are getting more into that stuff, so in each grade level it gets a little bit more in depth. It’s not just about drugs – it’s about respect, responsibility and dealing with peer pressure. It’s to make them feel more confident in themselves to make that decision to say ‘no’ and not feel bad about saying ‘no.’”

Berry said this is information both the community and youth need.

“It’s only going to get worse for kids, it’s not going to get better,” he said. “If you can save one or two out of the hundred you teach every year, that’s a success.”

Previously, DARE instructor officers provided education to elementary school students whereas the new curriculum targets junior and senior high students for the first time in Canada, said Berry.

“This is the first time this book has been handed out to DARE instructors in Canada,” he said. “It’s getting education to these kids at the junior high school level and letting them know they’ve got to be aware of what people are giving them. The stuff on the street is more potent and there is no information on what’s in it. You could die in 10 minutes.”

Berry signed on as a DARE instructor after a letter went out to peace officers in the area last year seeking volunteers to teach the program.

“Our mandate for peace officers is educate first,” he said. “If we start educating at the Grade 5 level and work our way up they get to know who we are. It’s not all about writing tickets. We already have the bike rodeo and mock accidents. This is just another tool to educate the kids in the community.”

Berry plans to get in touch with Oilfields High School, a feeder school that gets youth from elementary schools in Longview, Turner Valley and Millarville.

While he’s eager to teach the information he learned to teens, Berry questions whether he’ll find a rapt audience amongst the youth.

“My only concern is who’s really going to want to hear this information,” he said. “Pretty much all the kids will tell you they already know all this stuff. At that age a lot of them have already tried a lot of it. How are you going to make it so they want to listen to this? That’s one of our challenges as DARE officers.”

While the youth may think they know everything they need to, Berry said buyers, and most dealers, don’t know what’s in the drugs.

“The drugs are getting worse,” he said. “Carfentanyl is a big thing and pretty soon there’s going to be a bigger brand of fentanyl that’s going to kill off another thousand people. Once you’re addicted to this stuff there’s no turning back.”

As an officer, Berry has connections to people who handle drug overdoses. His wife is a paramedic.

“Her opinion is there’s more of the hard stuff now,” he said. “She’s seeing more of the opioids than before.”

As a result, youth need someone they trust to talk to and ask questions about drugs, said Berry.

“Most of them are afraid to talk to their parents about it and they don’t want to talk to their teacher about it,” he said. “I learned a lot of statistics and got a lot of scenario-based training. They never want you to cut down and criticize and demean someone for being in a situation, they want to educate them so they know how this stuff can effect them and what it will do to them if they get into them.”

Oilfields High School councillor Lori Isberg sees the value of a program like DARE in the school.

“You can’t beat education from the frontline when you’ve got someone trained in the program who knows from a first-hand perspective what’s really occurring in the community,” she said. “Having a reliable source is pretty critical and it sets up that relationship between RCMP and the students.”

Isberg said while many youth feel they know more about drugs than adults because of information they get online and through word out mouth, drugs have changed a lot.

“The reality now is that you can die,” she said. “This is a means of getting what the reality is out there. You hear the underground inklings of what’s happening out there, but what is the truth and what do they actually see?

“Let’s find out what’s really happening out there. That comes from people who are truly in the know.”