CITY'S DRUG-, ALCOHOL-PREVENTION PROGRAMS STUDIED BY GROUP OF FOREIGNERS

The reputation of Cape Girardeau's drug- and alcohol-prevention programs has become one of international scope.

Six representatives from countries as far away as Afghanistan and Singapore learned about the programs in detail Tuesday at the Holiday Inn in Cape Girardeau. Members of the group work in drug abuse prevention and police narcotics. They traveled here under the International Visitor Program with the World Affairs Council of St. Louis Inc.

The group is visiting cities across the country to look at different substance-abuse programs, said Sharee Galnore, coordinator of the Cape Girardeau Community Traffic Safety Program, which helped arrange the group's visit. The Cape Girardeau Police Department also helped.

World Affairs Council Executive Director Linda K. Leuckel, former director of the Easter Seals Society at Cape Girardeau, said the group visited Cape Girardeau to get a taste of how smaller cities deal with drug and alcohol prevention. Typically, she said, the program operates in large metropolitan areas.

Information was passed along Tuesday to the group members on aspects of the community traffic safety program; city law enforcement techniques, programs and practices; Community Team Training for Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention; and Project CHARLIE. The information came from members of the Cape Girardeau Police Department, one of them Police Chief Howard Boyd; Galnore; and the traffic safety program's assistant coordinator, Donna Boardman.

Group member Grainne Kenny of Dublin, Ireland, said a presentation by Cape Girardeau Police Officer Jeannie Dailey on the police department's DARE program had the biggest impact on her. DARE stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, a program targeted toward fifth- and sixth-graders.

"I can relate very well with her (Dailey) because in Ireland I operate unofficially with members of the drug squad," said Kenny, addiction information consultant with Grainne Kenny and Associates. She also serves as an Irish Council Member of Europe Against Drugs.

Kenny said she plans to send all the information she has picked up on her trip to the relevant sources in Ireland, including the country's Department of Education. The information would be sent, she said, as "a form of encouragement."

"Our group education in our schools is zilch. They talk about it and they talk around it," she said of the country's government workers, politicians, and civil servants.

She said she constantly pushes for group drug education in Ireland schools.

"You have to constantly keep reminding politicians. Politicians follow, they never lead," she said.

Programs like the ones in Cape Girardeau, Kenny said, don't really exist in Ireland. Stigmas about drug use exist in the country's more upscale areas, she said, and people in those areas don't want to talk about drugs affecting their families.

The United States and Swedan lead the world in drug abuse programs, she said. The Swedes, though, learn from the U.S., she said.

"The Americans definitely lead the field, especially in research into cannabis (marijuana)."

The group has already visited cities such as Cleveland and Atlanta and plans to go on to Montana and Los Angeles and San Francisco. Kenny said the group came to the United States three weeks ago and will remain in the country until the end of the month.

In addition to Kenny, the group is made up of Henning Fode of Denmark, a deputy assistant secretary of justice; Elizabeth A. Phillips of Jamaica, director of community development with the Kingston Restoration Co. Ltd.; Chandan G. Chandra of India, secretary to the Vivekanada Education Society; Masbollah Bin Fazal of Singapore, deputy director of the Central Narcotics Bureau; and a man identified only as Mr. Izatullah of Afghanistan, chief monitor of the Narcotics Awareness and Control Project in Peshawar, Pakistan.