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Involvement Of Parents Urged In War On DrugsBy CASEY SELIX Herald Staff WriterThe best way to battle the drug problem is for parents to get involved in Texas’ war on drugs, a retired Air Force general told a group at Pace High School Thursday night.“That’s the only way to get this thing turned around,” said Kenneth Fleenor, who is also a regional coordinator for Drug Abuse Research Education (DARE) Foundation Inc. DARE is the “resource” arm of Texans’ War on Drugs Committee.Fleenor, who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, said he realized during his imprisonment that the wealth of America was in its youth.“Without them, America has no future,” Fleenor said.“If an enemy country were to try to devise a plan to sabotage America,” Fleenor said, “it couldn’t come up with a better way than to poison the youth.“And that’s what’s happening to our kids who are involved in drugs,” he said.The retired brigadier general was one of two speakers at a war on drugs rally sponsored by Pace Parents and School Against Drugs Pace counselors organized the rally that,turned up close to 250 parents and educators at the high school cafeteria.Henry Juarez, crime prevention officer with the Brownsville Police Department, said that parents are usually the first ones to see a change in their children, but not recognize the cause.“The first reaction of a parent of a drug abuser is ‘God, I can’t believe it — we didn’t know anything,’ ” t he said.‘ ‘The symptoms are there for the parents but they’ve lacked the resources to identify the problem,” Juarez said.Juarez, who used to be assigned to the drug patrol at high schools, said parents need to “open our eyes because there are a lot of symptoms.”A change in a clean-cut child’s appearance, the type of music a child listens to and hisfriends can help tell parents if their child is using drugs, Juarez said.“We need to stay away from panic because that’s the worst thing we can do,” he said. “We need to identify the problem here and reduce it as much as possible.”Fleenor said parents can’t expect the schools to combat the drug problem alone because educators are there to teach.Parents can help by getting to kftow their children’s peers and the peers’ parents, he said. Together, the parents can determine the kinds of activities in which their children participate.“It works; it will work but it requires involvement,” he said.Fleenor showed an hour-long videotape of speeches by H. Ross Perot, chairman of Texans’ War on Drugs Committee, and researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Copies of “Mind Fields are being made by the school district to distribute to other campuses.Perot said that the committee’s efforts have made “parents start to act like parentsagain.”Perot, an industrialist and millionaire who has spoken in Harlingen, said it took him until adulthood to realize why he had to kiss his mother every night before going to sleep.That was his mother’s way of knowing that he came home and in what condition, he said.Fleenor distributed several pamphlets and told the group if they read them, “You’ll have the equivalent of a master’s degree in drug education compared to the average person.”Pace counselors also are distributing a tabloid on “how to get your child off marijuana,” a publication being circulated throughout the state by the War on Drugs Committee.“A Reason for Tears,” a magazine produced locally, was given to the group by police officers.Parents interested in getting involved in the war on drugs may contact Pace counselor Lenora Rentfro at 541-6351.
Newspaper Details
Brownsville Herald
Brownsville, Texas, US
Fri, Mar 20, 1981
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
College O.
MO, USA 02 Dec 2019
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