Van de Kamp, Honig Urge School Anti-Drug Program

To help prevent drug and alcohol abuse among California’s 4 million public school students, two leading state officials on Thursday proposed a comprehensive $21-million program that would begin in kindergarten and extend through the 12th grade.

Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp and state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, accompanied by the program’s legislative sponsor, Assemblyman Steve Clute (D-Riverside), unveiled the legislation during a press conference at Sun Valley Junior High School in the San Fernando Valley.

The bill calls for combining $10 million in state funds with $11 million from a federal drug prevention education program. It is designated as an urgency measure, meaning that it would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature for passage.

The state officials said they are confident that the bill will gain the approval of the Legislature. Although Honig has been engaged in a running battle with Gov. George Deukmejian over school expenditures, both the schools chief and Van de Kamp said they believe the governor will support the measure.

The proposed state contribution of $10 million is “not that much in the total scheme of the budget,” Van de Kamp said. “It’s a drop in the bucket” and considerably more modest than the $40 million that the attorney general said he originally wanted for the program.

“The governor is going to have to wrestle with a very fundamental question: Do we need this kind of education in the schools? I believe the governor, using his common sense and intelligence, is going to support this bill.”

Deukmejian Administration spokesman Kevin Brett said the governor will not take a position on the bill until it is reviewed by the Department of Finance and other analysts.

$2 Per Student

Under the legislation, local school districts would be entitled to receive about $2 per student to mount drug prevention efforts that follow broad state guidelines. The Los Angeles school district, with 590,000 students, stands to receive more than $1 million if the bill is approved.

The state Department of Education is not imposing a single curriculum or approach, but Honig said that he hoped school districts would not spend their share of the money on programs that only offer information about drugs and alcohol. Studies have shown that efforts focusing exclusively on giving students information about the uses and misuses of drugs and alcohol often had the undesirable effect of encouraging experimentation. A more effective approach, Honig said, combines such information with efforts to foster in children the social skills that enable them to “say no to drugs.”

Van de Kamp, whose efforts in drug abuse prevention have included narrating a music video called “Rock Against Drugs,” said he would like to see many school districts use the money to replicate successful programs, such as the Los Angeles school district’s DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program. The DARE program, which operates in every elementary school in the district, uses uniformed police officers to teach about the uses and consequences of drug experimentation and ways to refuse drugs.

Ruth Rich, who oversees health instruction for the Los Angeles school district, said the district would use the funds to enlarge the DARE program and expand a pilot program at Sun Valley Junior High to train and place a team of drug prevention counselors in each of the district’s 73 junior highschools.