You can’t scare kids away from drugs or tell them to ‘Just Say No’ without saying why

Along my morning walk through Turlock, I find used drug pipes next to empty food wrappers. Do schools continue to teach our children to “Just Say No To Drugs”? Or what happened to the D.A.R.E programs?

D.A.R.E failed because it is a system intended to shock or scare youth into not using drugs. It was supposed to catch attention and then educate youngsters on the dangers and risks of using drugs. Instead, teenagers need to become informed and encouraged to make their own choices.

Without explanation, we teach our young children to politely say “yes please” and “thank you” to adults. A turnaround during the preteen years, we teach them to start saying no. No to drugs, no to strangers and no to anything that counteracts parents’ rules. We do this without explaining the simple two-letter word and why it is important to say “No.”

Why explain? We must explain because they must become independent thinkers, and we want them to become leaders rather than followers, and an opportunity to teach them to become a pack leader and to say, “No Way!”