DARE'S DYING GASP

The nation's most popular drug education program may be on the ropes. The
Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE, program is increasingly being
tossed out of school systems as the evidence of its failure to deter drug
use becomes overwhelming.

DARE was the brainchild of Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, who
launched the program in the early 1980s. More than 20 million students
receive DARE training each school day; DARE is taught in every state and in
three-quarters of the nation's school districts. The DARE curriculum is
taught by police primarily to fifth- and sixth-graders, though children in
kindergarten and in high school also receive DARE instruction. The police
are supposed to serve as role models and trusted confidants.

America is deluged with DARE paraphernalia - including bears, bumper
stickers, buttons, hats, and jeeps. DARE has everything - except good
results. Many independent experts have found that DARE miserably fails
students:

- The federal Bureau of Justice Assistance paid $300,000 to the Research
Triangle Institute (RTI), a North Carolina research firm, to analyze DARE's
effectiveness. The RTI study found that DARE failed to significantly reduce
drug use. Researchers warned that "DARE could be taking the place of other,
more beneficial drug-use curricula."

- Dennis Rosenbaum, professor of criminal justice studies at the University
of Illinois at Chicago, surveyed and tracked 1,800 kids who had DARE
training and concluded in 1998 that "suburban students who participated in
DARE reported significantly higher rates of drug use ... than suburban
students who did not participate in the program."

- A 1999 study by the California legislative analyst's office "concluded
that DARE didn't keep children from using drugs. In fact, it found that
suburban kids who took DARE were more likely than others to drink, smoke
and take drugs," the Los Angeles Times reported.

- A 1999 University of Kentucky study, funded by the National Institutes of
Health, examined the effect of DARE on students' behavior over the
subsequent 10 years. The report concluded: "Our results are consistent in
documenting the absence of beneficial effects associated with the DARE
program. This was true whether the outcome consisted of actual drug use or
merely attitudes toward drug use." One Kentucky researcher observed: "The
only difference was that those who received DARE reported slightly lower
levels of self-esteem at age 20."

A 'FRAUD'

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson recently denounced DARE as "a fraud on
the people of America." Anderson, who yanked DARE from Salt Lake City
schools, complained: "For far too long, drug-prevention policies have been
driven by mindless adherence to a wasteful, ineffective, feel-good program.
DARE has been a huge public-relations success but a failure at
accomplishing the goal of long-term drug-abuse prevention."

DARE America President Glenn Levant defends DARE by pointing to the
reported 13-percent decline in teen-age drug use in the most recent annual
survey. However, the percentage of eighth-graders who used marijuana,
cocaine, and LSD tripled between 1991 and 1997. DARE cannot claim credit
for the most recent decline without accepting blame for the huge increase
in the preceding years - at a time when DARE already saturated the nation's
public schools.

DARE suffered a stunning defeat last April that could cripple its ability
to stifle criticism. Federal Judge Virginia Phillips, in a case involving
DARE America's libel suit against Rolling Stone magazine, ruled that there
was "substantial truth" to the charges that DARE had sought to "suppress
scientific research" critical of DARE and had "attempted to silence
researchers at the Research Triangle Institute, editors at the American
Journal of Public Health, and producers at "'Dateline: NBC."

DARE's feel-good photo opportunities are no substitute for effective drug
education. American children deserve something than a drug program that
fails to persuasively inform and warn them of the danger of narcotics.
Politicians, school officials, and police need the courage to admit that
DARE is a dud.

The writer is the author of "Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion & Abuse of
Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years."