Dare was a program that I had been looking forward to since last year when I saw all of my sixth grade companions go to Dare tired and unmotivated, and an hour later, they came back bright and overjoyed. Once I went to my first mood warping Dare lesson it was fun.

Pat Bryant, our Dare officer, is funny and has taught us much about everything. For instance drugs the drug that he has taught us about is marijuana. Marijuana is illegal but for good reasons. Marijuana can hurt you by: causing short term memory loss, breathing problems, more colds and upper respiratory problems, and an increased risk of cancer. It is deadly addictive and harmful in many other ways.

We learned about alcohol and what it can do to you, you’re family, and usually your car. Alcohol can make you drunk. The symptoms are usually loss of coordination, slow thinking reflexes, not able to talk right, and blurred vision. At Dare one morning we all got to put on fatal vision goggles and when you put them on it was nearly impossible to walk. One of the exercises was putting one foot up for about 10 seconds which hardly any of us could do then touch the top of a pen. When you watched people, it looked wacky because the pen was right in front of them so they stuck out one finger. Someone I know nearly poked Pat’s eye. The fatal vision goggles were at 0.04 influence and people are arrested at 0.08 while driving. It is not unusual for a driver to be at 0.25 so what we were seeing was a fraction of what it is really like and Driving would be ten times harder. So really don’t drive while under the influence of alcohol.

Next is Tobacco. Cigarettes are stupendously bad. Each year 400,000 American people die of tobacco reasons. 3000 of those are non-smokers who inhale other people’s smoke. Most long-term symptoms are lung cancer and heart disease. There are 200 poisons in tobacco! 200! One of them we know is nicotine. Smoking also causes birth problems.

Dare is fun and very educational, and with Pat, funny, so just say “No” to drugs, alcohol, or tobacco.