GB students launch new drug program
One student's prescription pill expulsion launches county-wide prevention program
BY PAM BRANNON Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

A group of 10 Gulf Breeze High School (GBHS) one Gulf Breeze Middle School (GBMS) student are putting together a drug prevention program that school board members have decided to implement in all Santa Rosa County high schools and middle schools. Four students from the Gulf Breeze committee presented their program and pamphlet to the school board.

The students said they hope the program will be as much a part of the school curriculum someday as the dug prevention program Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) now. The students' program is called SAPP - or as their pamphlet states, 'Students Against (the misuse of) Prescription Pills."

Each of the four Gulf Breeze students - Miranda Coley, Mickey Walker, Madeleine Butler, and Arica Kuaile -- took the microphone one at a time to give a portion of the presentation.

Arica Kuaile told the board during her portion of the presentation that she had been expelled five months ago from GBHS because she had taken prescription medication to school. Kuaile said she had "determined to turn a bad thing into a good thing,"and some of her friends helped her start the core committee. "We have grown from an idea, to a group of 11, and are still growing in numbers and interest," she said.

School board member Ed Gray III of Gulf Breeze said "I don't know when we have ever before had a presentation quite like this - from a group of students. Here are students who have formed such an idea and program, all resulting from one student making a bad decision."

Miranda Coley, a sophomore at GBHS, said the student committee has developed a mission and vision. She said their mission was to first raise awareness in our school and community about the dangers of misuse of prescription pills, to educate teens about peer pressure, and to become a community supported group. She said their vision to have a studentbased committee implemented into the schools, have amnesty boxes in every single rest room in every single high school and middle school in the county, and to distribute pamphlets and posters throughout the county.

Mickey Walker, a junior at GBHS, showed the board what the amnesty boxes would look like. He said having one of those boxes in every rest room, drilled to the floor and locked like a safe so no one can get into them, would give students an 'out' if they bring prescription drugs to school and later change their minds.

Madeleine Butler is a sixth grader at GBMS and will serve as the program chairman for that school if the program is implemented there. She told the board the committee envisions having monthly meetings at each school of a student-based committee, to hold fundraising events to help with pamphlet and poster distribution, and enlist the support and help of the sheriff. She said they are also scheduled to meet with a two-county pharmaceutical group within the next two weeks, referred to them by School Board Chair Hugh Winkles, to get support to hang the posters in pharmacies throughout the county.

Gray offered some personal support to the group, "If you can come up with a final pamphlet, with some fine tuning of what you have here, I will personally guarantee to come up with the money, from business sources, for the printing. And we will make sure one of these pamphlets is in the hands of every single high school student in Santa Rosa County."

Diane Coleman of Navarre said, "We would like you ladies and gentleman to get a group together that would go to all the other high schools and middle schools in the county and present the program to the student governments and advisory committees, if you would please do that. It will be better coming from you, since you have developed it."

Board Chair Hugh Winkles, who is a pharmacist and owner of Winkles Pharmacy, said, "This pamphlet is a job well done. I would be glad to help you fine tune it and get it ready for Mr. Gray's printing. The Amnesty Boxes are a great idea, and I am sure the Sheriff will work with you on that."

Last week the Santa Rosa County School board reinstated Arica Kuaile as of Oct. 23 to attend Gulf Breeze High. She said she and her committee will work immediately to put into place the SAPP program.