THOUSAND OAKS : 70 Graduate From D.A.R.E. Program

Max Samini and Stephen Marx, both 12, donned shades and swayed to the “Drug Free Rap:”

“Doing drugs ain’t bummin’. Smoking dope ain’t cool. Sticking something up your nose, you’re looking like a fool.”

The boys were among the 70 sixth-graders at Aspen Elementary School in Thousand Oaks who were graduating from the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program Friday afternoon. The graduation concluded D.A.R.E.’s fifth year at Aspen.

As part of the ceremony, the children performed skits and read essays denouncing drugs while standing in front of a poster scrawled with “We Dare You to Say No” and “Say Nope to Dope!” Paul Kaspar, a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy who had worked with the children once a week, cited some sobering statistics at the ceremony.

“The leading cash crop in California is not oranges, alfalfa or grapes,” Kaspar said. “It’s marijuana.” He said Los Angeles has passed Miami as cocaine import capital of the United States.

“We can’t stop the supply side, so we’ll work on the demand side,” he said, emphasizing that the battle will be won “not by the number of police cars in the streets but by the number of D.A.R.E. flags waving over the schools.”