WAR
The Uncensored Truth
By Milton Creagh

The plague of juvenile drug dealings Dangerous over-the-counter drugs Look-Alikes Who we are at war against? How to fight back Enough is enough! There must be a change! But, there will be no change if you and I simply sit back and wait for it. A change can and will come when you and I determine that enough is enough and that it is time for all of us to declare war.

War on Drugs! War on Racism! War on Hate!
War on Ignorance! War on senseless Violence!

Personally, I declared war on drugs and ignorance and violence and racism and sexually transmitted diseases a few years ago. In 1981, former U.S. President Ronald Reagan declared war on drugs for the entire population of the United States. The problem is that most of us who makeup the population, did not declare and still have not declared war. Once you have declared war it is :imperative that you learn how to fight back. No longer can we allow ourselves to be duped into thinking that we cannot fight back, or that we cannot win this war, or that we should sit back, and let someone else fight our battles for us. I intend to save my neighborhood and if you want To, save yours it is time to get up and get into it. But you don`t know what to do, do you? Here are a few things that your community (any community) can do to begin to fight back:

Ideas to Save Your Community

1. School Administrators, business leaders and student leaders should develop strong statements condemning drug usage, drug dealing and gang involvement. These statements should be widely disseminated and all penalties should be strictly enforced. It is very critical that students are involved in this process and the students be representative of the entire student population, racially, social, economically, academically, athletes/non-athletes, etc.

2. Keep kids from pulling out of the educational system by utilizing different communication, teaching and learning styles to reach kids. One of the clearest indicators of kids who will end up in trouble with the legal system is how they did in the school system. Of the thousands of men in the American penal system, one of the commonalities is the high percentage of high school dropouts. If we want to keep kids on the right track, they must have hope that they can reach their full[ potential. Ideally, parents should make sure their children see what is possible for them, but schools can and must help.

3. Recognize that kids do a lot of things' that hurt them, primarily due to boredom. Your community must begin to develop outlets for children to keep them busy, not just things for youngest children, but things for junior high and high schoolers as well. One of the more successful programs in the country night now is something called Project Graduation. It is designed to give teens an alternative after their prom and graduation ceremonies to going to the all too typical beer blast where they run the risk of becoming a victim of drinking and driving. Project Graduation is a success because communities work very hard to make their events more attractive than somebody's get high party at a local hotel. One community in Michigan even gave away a car as a door prize! I love Project Graduation and wish it had been around when I was in high school, but why can't we have something that attractive to kids year round? A great amount of consideration should be given to utilizing existing public school facilities to house activities for kids over the weekend. A school system that I worked with recently has a, wonderful program that they call "Friday Night Live. " On Friday night they open their high school campus up to kids fi7om 8:00 p.m. until midnight. They have open basketball and volleyball in the gymnasium and music playing in the cafeteria. They also have the bleachers pulled out in the gym in case kids ' Just want to sit and talk to their friends. They also have a snack bar set up and the kids can buy food and drinks. They also periodically have scavenger hunts for the kids with great donated prizes (stereos, CDs, etc.). Parents and other adults from community groups donate their time to chaperon the event. The only big problem they have is the kids want Saturday night as well, and they could not get enough adults to offer it two nights.

4. Make an effort to eliminate all mixed messages for kids in your community. Why do convenience stores that we often send our kids into to pay for our gas, sell rolling papers? Why do they sell the legal, yet immoral "Look-A-Like" drugs and we never open our mouths in protest? School personnel and other adults in the community need to become very aware of pro-usage - and pro-gang clothing, insignias, terminology and behavior and try to eliminate it in the community. If you cannot totally eliminate it, it is important that it at least be addressed or else it appears to the kids who are not using or gang-banging or dealing that either we (adults) don't care or feel powerless to fight back. Recently, I went into a high school and immediately noticed a number of kids wearing obvious gang paraphernalia, and yet not one teacher or administrator said a word to the kids coming in. When I went up to speak, I mentioned it and said to them that they were not fooling anyone and that gang- banging does not make you cool, and in fact, it hurts people. The other kids in the auditorium broke out in spontaneous applause. Many of them came up to me after the program and thanked me for mentioning it. The scary thing is that some of the faculty came up later and asked me what had tipped me off to gang activity. They honestly didn't know what the clothing and insignias meant. The problem is that the symbols are so obvious, kids think we have to see and know what is going on. Therefore, if we do nothing, it appears as though we don't care or we are afraid to do anything.

5. Establish a truancy elimination program to make it difficult and boring to cut school. Develop a. system to provide passes to all kids who are away from school for acceptable reasons and encourage businesses to provide passes to kids during school hours who do not have their pass.. It always amazes me to see stores and malls that claim that they support public education but will their have kids who are obviously of school age in their place of business during school hours and they say nothing. They simply take their money. Put your money where your mouth is.

   There is a barber in Atlanta by the name of JT who has been doing my hair for nearly twelve years now and I, will continue to go to JT for another twelve years even though his shop is inconvenient. Back in the mid-eighties I was sitting in JT's chair on a Tuesday afternoon at about 1:30. Four teenaged young men walked in to get their hair done. JT immediately asked them what they wanted. They said they wanted to get their hair done. JT looked at his watch and asked if it was a school holiday. They laughed. JT then told them that they needed to be in school and that they could not come into his shop until after school let out. He put them out! That impressed me tremendously. JT put his money where his mouth was. How many other businesses do the same?

6. Conduct intensive month long training sessions for teachers, counselors, clergy, etc., during the summer to help them really understand the drug problem and how to help. Every school in America should have at least one well-trained staff-member, yet most don@. Every church in America should have a drug prevention or awareness program. Too many times I have gone into communities and done programs with kids who have afterwards come up to me to tell me about problems at home and when I ask them why they have not shared this information with adults in their community, too often they say they have no one to talk to, or that people in their community don't understand. That might be hard for me to believe except for the fact that too often I have had teachers and counselors approach me after programs to say that they were glad so many kids had self-identified for problems after my speech, however, they felt inadequate. Primarily because all we have really prepared them to deal with is student usage. They have not been trained on how to address juvenile dealing or parents' usage.

7. Develop a way to make Children of Alcoholics (COA) groups and Alateen programs available for kids in your community. In many cases the: kids who need to go to Alateen but do not have their own transportation have to depend on the: drug abusing parents to get them to the program. In most cases the parent has not acknowledged that there is a problem and doesn't want their kid going somewhere to tell someone that the, have a problem, so the kid can't go get help.

8. Recognize that the drug problem is not just an issue of preventing children from using. We must address the issue of adult/ parent usage. We must publicly acknowledge that the drug user is a part of the problem. One of the reasons that we have been able to discuss drugs with kids is because we have access to them through the schools. We also need access to adults through the worksite, through churches and synagogues, military bases, etc.

9. Offer parenting training programs in your community. Do not run them only through schools. Utilize churches and public housing facilities as well. Once parents have been trained, help them form parent clusters, which, in essence, will serve as unofficial, informal support groups for parents.

10. Develop student peer programs that really are based on peer relationships, not cliques in your schools. In too many cases peer leadership groups and peer counseling teams are made up of one ti e of student. Every school has both formal and informal leadership. Often the informal leadership is almost completely ignored because they may not always fit the administration's pictures of what the right kind of kids look like.

11. Institute programs to help build a new image for non-users. Stop portraying them as being wimpy or non-cool. Stop glamorizing, glorifying and romanticizing drug dealers and gang bangers.

    Dope is wrong! It is socially wrong! Psychologically wrong! Morally wrong! Theologically wrong! Physiologically wrong! Scripturally wrong! Anyway you turn it, anyway you cut it, dope is wrong!!

    Drugs are immoral and an insult to the sanctity of the human spirit. It is wrong, and intelligent Americans must stop being wimpy, and stand up and say this is wrong and be willing to do something about it.

    Whenever there is a moral issue there are at least two institutions that must get involved in the moral development of people.

    They are:

    1. The family
    2. The church, synagogue and other religious institution.

    Until we enlist those two entities in the war on drugs, we will probably fail in our efforts to win this war.

    Why did I write the book? I wrote it because there are some critical things that every American needs to know about. We have some huge problems in this country, but they are not insurmountable. They are only insurmountable as long as Are keep acting like someone else is going to solve them and keep waiting for magical, mystical solutions instead of realizing that we are the solution. Please be aware that this book was not designed to be a marvelously technical textbook type of manuscript - we have enough of those and though they are very good, the people who need the information never seem to read them because they are tedious and boring. This book is not designed to be a do-all, fix-all; there is no such animal. Another problem we face is that too many people with vested interests keep acting like the program that they are involved with is the best thing since sliced bread. There is no one right program or book, this problem is too complex for that.

    One of the things that I am convinced must happen for us to have any chance at all of winning the war on drugs, is that we must begin to fight!!!

    EACH ONE, REACH ONE - REACH ONE, TEACH ONE.