D.A.R.E. Graduation in Florida

Following up on the previous post, 5th graders in Santa Rosa Florida also recently celebrated their graduation from D.A.R.E.

The Santa Rosa Press Gazette in Florida printed the local winning D.A.R.E. essay. Upon completion of the program the students are required to write an essay detailing what they learned in the sessions. "A top winner is selected from each of the fifth grade classrooms, and from those winners one essay is selected as the best."

The winning essay includes a few mentions regarding inhalant abuse:

Winning D.A.R.E. Essay
by Destiny Redd

• "I learned a lot of important things that I never knew in D.A.R.E. Now I know how to make healthy choices. It also helped me to make good decisions in any situation. I learned how to get out of risky situations."
  
  
• "Facts about inhalants: Headaches, muscle weakening, abdominal pain, severe mood swings, and violent behavior. Numbness and tingling of hands and feet, decrease or loss of sense of smell, nosebleeds, and lots more effects could happen. Hundreds of legal household products can be sniffed or huffed to get high. All inhalants can be toxic"
  
  
• "So all of these different types of drugs, I never would of thought that they could do so much harmful things to your body. Especially the inhalants because a little kid could sniff one of the inhalants and that little kid could get high"
  
  
• "I am so excited that I learned these facts about tobacco, marijuana, alcohol and other drugs that hurt our body. But if my friend ever tried to make me do something like all that stuff, I would just tell them “If you are my friend you wouldn’t try to make me do something I don’t wanna (sic) do.” And I’d walk away. The kids and teens that do tobacco, marijuana, alcohol and other bad drugs, they are not very smart because they’re messing up their life. I don’t care if I’m cool or not, but I think the people that do that stuff are the ones that are not cool. I’m glad I learned about things. So I thank you D.A.R.E."