DARE TO BE A DOPE INTELLIGENCE QUESTIONED; STUPIDITY REWARDED

Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen has shocked many of his Republican colleagues
by breaking ranks with the conservative right to raise intelligent
questions about how money is being spent in the war on drugs.

Intelligent questions have no place in the war on drugs. They send the
wrong message.

The war on drugs has been described as the ultimate Humpty Dumpty social
policy. When all of the king's horses and all of the king's men couldn't
put Humpty Dumpty together again, the automatic response from the king was
to add millions of dollars to the budget for more horses and more men.

That upside-down logic is what Waukesha County Dist. Atty. Paul Bucher has
been trying to explain to Jensen-that you can't judge the effectiveness of
an anti-drug program by its results.

Jensen started it by suggesting that DARE, one of the most politically
beloved drug education programs of all time, has been parading through the
streets without any clothes.

At a time when government claims to be looking for money to do something
meaningful about drug problems-like, say, providing drug treatment to the
long waiting list of addicts who need it-Jensen said it was time to
re-examine how anti-drug funds were being used.

He specifically mentioned DARE-Drug Abuse Resistance Education-as a program
that would have difficulty withstanding public scrutiny if policy makers
ever looked at its results.

Actually, Jensen understated the case. A few years ago, the federal
Department of Education commissioned an independent study of drug education
programs, including DARE. One of the more shocking conclusions was that
children who participated in the DARE program were more likely to use drugs
than those who weren't subjected to the program.

It's a good thing there isn't a Double DARE program, or all of our kids
would be junkies.

It doesn't take any big national study to figure out what is wrong with the
DARE program. DARE is a drug education program for school children taught
by law enforcement officers. Young people look to police officers for
guidance about what recreational substances to use about as often as they
consult the cops on what music to buy.

Perhaps the most effective drug education in recent years has been some of
the slick advertising campaigns. No, not those silly commercials about
frying eggs inside your head. The ones that make kids withdrawing into
drugs look like real losers who are missing out on a lot.

All of those police videos on TV show us what law enforcement officers are
trained to do regarding drugs-run, shout, break down doors, slam people up
against walls, etc. Those educational techniques employ a completely
different set of muscles than the subtler communication skills of classroom
teaching.

Law enforcement often has a tin ear when it comes to communicating with
young people. As part of the DARE program, representatives of the Milwaukee
County Sheriff's Office have taken luxury sports cars, confiscated from
drug dealers, around to high schools to show off to students.

The message of the deputies: If you deal drugs, we're going to get all of
your personal possessions when you go to prison. The message received by
students: Man, drug dealers drive some fine cars!

It's no surprise that District Attorney Bucher blasted Jensen for raising
even the mildest of questions about the DARE program. DARE has never really
been about combating drug abuse. It's all about expanding the budgets of
law enforcement.

That's why Bucher publicly took the absurd position that looking at results
was not the way to judge the effectiveness of an anti-drug program. He sure
wouldn't make that argument about any program that was producing results.

Instead of looking at effects on children who have participated in the
program, Bucher has a better idea. Why not just look for any positive
trends in society in the reduction of drug use among young people and
attribute those successes to DARE?

That way, instead of increasing the funding of programs that work and
reducing funds to those that don't-such as DARE-we can continue to expand
the budgets of law enforcement, results be damned.

Never mind that as many as 80% of the inmates in American prisons have a
history of substance abuse. Meanwhile, the number of drug treatment slots
in the United States has declined by more than half since 1993. Drug
treatment is now available to less than one-tenth of the inmates who need it.

Neither is treatment available to most of those on the street who want it
to save their own lives. It sure would be nice if we could find some money
to treat those people, but Jensen is naive to expect politicians to shift
money away from ineffective programs.

That would send the wrong message on drugs. Namely, that we value actual
results over political posturing.