DETROIT, MICHIGAN – Merely fifteen years after pledging to abstain from drugs in a spirited D.A.R.E. pledge, twenty-five year old Jack Carson was found dead in a dilapidated building, just a few blocks away from a seedy nightclub.

Many loved ones have gathered to express shock and dismay at Jack’s passing, often contrasting the circumstances of his death with his rather humdrum existence, and his tendency to keep his word.

“Jack took that D.A.R.E. pledge really seriously,” remarked Bradley Wilson, a childhood friend. “It seems so unlike him to blatantly contradict a promise he held so dearly to his heart for so many years. I mean, we’re talking about a guy who kept pinkie promises and received a cooties vaccination at age seven.”

“Other students fell asleep during those bullshit seminars, but not Jack. He hung on every word, and always made sure that his friends never even so much as drank caffeine in front of him. He once told me that caffeine is a gateway drug. I laughed it off at first, but he was dead serious. That was just the kind of person he was,” Eugene Barlow, a classmate, said of his friend.

“We heralded Jack as a success story,” bemoaned a visibly distraught Francisco X Pegueros, President of D.A.R.E. America. “He was everything that D.A.R.E. strives to be: dogmatic, didactic, and just plain insufferable. We were shocked when we found out just how far this young man had ventured from our program’s teachings. Maybe he found someone who corrupted him into living a little. If only we had gotten to him first.”

As the world wonders how someone could break a sacred vow that they made at the age of ten to an honest, caring organization like D.A.R.E., the Carson family looks to carry on the legacy of young Jack Carson, the boy who received at least four swirlies a day in high school.

“We started the Jack Carson Memorial Fund, which pledges to fight partying, fun, and amusement of any kind on the part of young people. It’s what our son would have wanted,” his father Stanley told reporters.