MAYOR, DRUG CZAR DEBATE MERITS OF DARE PROGRAM

The nation's drug-policy director probably didn't like what he'd read
in the New York Times about Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson. But
before traveling to Utah this week, Gen. Barry McCaffrey arranged a
meeting with the mayor to discuss something the two men couldn't
disagree on more: Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE.

"All the peer-reviewed research shows that DARE is a complete waste
of money and, even worse, fritters away the opportunity to implement
a good drug-prevention program in schools," Anderson said in the
Sept. 16 Times article. In a later story, McCaffrey was quoted as
calling DARE "the premier drug-prevention program." The majority of
U.S. public school teachers use DARE, which means they bring in
police officers to teach their drug-prevention component of their
classes.

So there they were on Wednesday with McCaffrey in town to convene the
White House Task Force on Drugs and Sports in Salt Lake City and to
ask Anderson why he canceled DARE earlier this year.

"I stressed my view that we should focus our resources on what we
know to be effective: good prevention and treatment programs,"
Anderson said.

The mayor calls DARE miserably ineffective and says he has urged Salt
Lake District Superintendent Darline Robles to examine other
curriculum such as the Life Skills Training program and the ATLAS
program for high school athletes. "There are good research-based,
effective programs that apparently don't have the lobbying efforts
behind them that DARE does," Anderson said.

Drug Strategies, a Washington, D.C., research group, rates
drug-prevention curricula, and gave straight A's to Life Skills
Training and STAR (Students Taught Awareness and Resistance). It gave
lower grades to DARE.

"General McCaffrey dismissed Drug Strategies," Anderson said. The
drug czar questioned the organization's credibility, saying it was
funded by New York billionaire George Soros. Soros was a major backer
of Initiative B, the measure approved by voters in November.
Initiative B will alter the state's forfeiture laws to increase
protections for third-party individuals whose property is used in
committing a crime and then seized by police.

Soros isn't behind Drug Strategies, according to Anderson; the Kansas
Health Foundation and Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation are among its
grantors.

Anderson also regaled McCaffrey with published studies about drug
education around the United States. Anderson said, "I pointed out
that there hasn't been one research article in a peer-reviewed
journal reflecting that DARE is effective. On the other hand, there
have been numerous peer-reviewed studies finding that DARE is
absolutely ineffective and a waste of money. He challenged me on
that. But he was unable to cite anything that supports his long-held
position on DARE. I gave him my card" and told him to call if he
found any such research.

As if the meeting were not going badly enough, another inflammatory
topic came up.

"He'd read," said Anderson, "that I'd advocated decriminalizing
marijuana. I do not favor decriminalization. I do favor a different
approach, once people are in the criminal-justice system, of
treatment and education." If we're going to stage a war on drugs, he
added, stage it in the states.

"We're still falling very far short when half of the people in this
country with drug problems who are seeking treatment can't get into
treatment programs," Anderson said. At the same time we're sending
$1.3 billion to Colombia and what we're really doing is supporting
one side in an internal conflict. There will not be one ounce of
difference in the supply of cocaine on our streets."

In addition to funding more treatment programs, Anderson wants
education spending stepped up.

"My view has always been that our schools have a huge responsibility
to provide drug-prevention education," the mayor said. As it turned
out, that's a point on which he and McCaffrey agree. Two days
afterward, Anderson called their meeting "honest and interesting,"
and added, "I think it was productive inasmuch as we both agree that
performance-enhancing drugs should be eliminated from both
professional and amateur athletics, and great strides have been made
in the Olympic movement. (McCaffrey) has played a huge role in that."

Anderson sees his own role as continuing to urge the Salt Lake School
District to adopt a "research-based, proven, effective
drug-prevention component, rather than a feel-good, 'just say no'
program like DARE."