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Show Drug awareness, Eiey to seminar held at Vernal Junior High The Uintah County Sheriff's Department Depart-ment has been involved in a four-day drug awareness program in the Vernal Ver-nal Junior High School this past week. Sheriff's Deputy Lee England said the program is intended to make people peo-ple more aware of the problems of drug abuse. By the time students are in junior high school, most have already been exposed to the availability availabili-ty of drugs, and many have already been subjected to peer pressure involving in-volving drugs. England pointed out there is a big difference in using drugs and abusing drugs. He said the use of drugs has become an integral part of our culture, and many people are. better off because of drugs. The problems arise from drug abuse. Even prescription drugs have warnings on them, and should be used only when needed, and then only under the supervision of a physician. Drug abuse can occur in many forms, and it doesn't need to be use of heroin. Prescription drugs are abused every day. Drug abuse prevention preven-tion gets the best results when people are made aware of the potential problems pro-blems before they feel the effects of drugs. Many drug abusers know they are hurting themselves, but often by the time they come to this realization, it's too late. They're hooked. No one sets out to be drug addict. That is just something that comes with the territory over a period of time abusing drugs. The Sheriff's department depart-ment program is intended to reach people before it is too late. England said this particular program pro-gram reached about 50 percent of the students in the seventh, eighth and ninth grades. The class was taught in conjunction with the health and science classes in Vernal Junior High. Five officers were involved in the four day program, Lee England, Larry Crowl, Fern Reynolds, Victor Polek, and Sheriff Arden Steward. They are planning a similar program to be given to sixth grade students this Friday. Besides lectures by the officers, the program also involved slide presentations presenta-tions and a live demonstration of a drug sniffing dog. One slide Dresention deals with the affects of drugs and alcohol on driving ability, and the other deals with drugs in general. These slide presentations are available for public use at the sheriff's office. The sheriff will also provide a deputy to speak at public gatherings when requested. The highlight of the program was a drug sniffing dog. The dog is a Golden Retriever, owned by a private company from Salt Lake City. The dog is trained to sniff out drugs and is used often in drug busts by law enforcement en-forcement agencies, as well as by private companies looking for drugs being used by their employees. Deputy Fern Reynolds placed a marijuana cigarette in her wallet to see if the dog would be able to find something so small. Mrs. Reynolds took her wallet out of her pocket and placed it in front of the room before the dog arrived. She said the dog no more than got in the room before he began C ontinued on page 2 Drugs... Continued from page 1 spiffing her up one side and down the other. The dog then went to the wallet, found the marijuana, then back to Mrs. Reynolds to check her out again. The dog doesn't know he is doing police work. All he knows is that he is playing a game, namely, finding the hidden drugs. And he is good. The owner of the dog says he is easily worth $10,000 to $12,000. Drug dealers put out contracts on these dogs, because they require a lengthy training train-ing process, and are very difficult to replace. The owner, Jeff Nelson said if something happens to this dog, it would take him six months just to find another dog capable of this type of training. When this dog is taken to California he is dept in a kennel surrounded by attack dogs and armed guards patrol the area outside the attack dogs. Nelson said dogs of this nature require re-quire two years training before they are ready to work. England said the three days spend last week with the eighth and ninth grades was quite involved. The first day was spent on marijuana and alcohol, the second on other drugs, and the third was the dog demonstration. After the class, students were asked to ' fill out anonymous questionnaires regarding their own experience with the availability and use of drugs. England said the results of the survey won't be known for a while. Preliminary results of the survey showed that of an eighth grade class, 39 said they had used tabacco, 59 said they had tried alcohol, 14 said they had used marijuana and 4 5 admitted ad-mitted to using narcotics. The fourth day of the program was spent this pust Monday with students from the seventh grade. It wus a less intense program. This same type of thing will take pluce with the sixth grade this Friday. Deputy England gave a portion of the drug awareness program at the Vernal Chamber of Commerce noon meeting Tuesday. At the chamber meeting, England said that parents should become aware of the effccl.s of marijuana to Ik? able to recognize ils symptoms in their children. |
