By Jeramy McNeely

Happy April Everybody!  I’d like to take this week’s article to focus on a drug awareness assembly that will be held at the Eads High School Gym on May 8^th at 1:45 p.m.  The title of the event is “Good Saturday Night = Lifetime of Compromised Dreams”.  You are all cordially invited to join as students, faculty, community, and surrounding communities engage in the first-hand experiences of college student Ethan Fisher.  He will relive the choices that took him from social drinking, to prison, to living as a convicted felon.  Attendees will hear about the path Ethan took as part of his personal campaign to educate students and student-athletes about the domino effect of social drinking, drug use, prescription abuse, suicide and truancy.  There is a sensitivity warning to this program as includes graphic content in an effort to get his point across.  So, children younger than junior high are discouraged to attend. 

I have no statistical data to speak of, but in conversations with community members, leaders, and other public entities, drug use in our area is on the rise.  Our office cares about our community and the welfare of our kids hence the development of this presentation.  I’d like to thank Mrs. Barnett for helping arrange this assembly at the last minute.  We felt it necessary for area students to see this program before they get out for summer break.

I’d also like to thank the sponsors for this event as it did not come cheap.  I really dislike asking for money.  I know businesses and community members get inundated with requests to sponsor events all the time.  But I had to swallow my pride (once again) to seek sponsorship dollars for this event and I couldn’t have received more support or encouragement.  At the moment, we have received generous sponsorship dollars from the following entities:

• Eads School District
• Kiowa Health Mart
• Crow’s Stop & Shop
• Saffer Spray Service
• Eads Auto Supply and Hardware LLC
• Eads Consumer Supply
• Hometown Grill
• Rod & Pamela Cole
• Jeramy & Lisa McNeely
• The Rodeo Road Apples
• The Kiowa County Press
• Richard and Sharon Scott
• Kiowa County Commissioners
• Kiowa County Social Services

If you would like to sponsor this event, we would love to include you on this list of generous donors.  Mostly, we want you to attend.  Kids, parents, and grandparents can learn a lot from this powerful presentation.  Our driving motto for this event has been “If we can keep just one kid off drugs, then we did our job”.  So, watch for flyers around the communities and we hope to see you May 8^th!