DARE PROGRAM'S EFFECTIVENESS DISPUTED

In the Oct. 7 issue of The Daily Reflector, Kim Walters of Winterville
said: "Is Mr. Ruff not familiar with the DARE program and its success in
our state?" Yes, I am quite familiar with the DARE program, and its success
rate. Allow me to share the real deal on the DARE program. A federally
funded Research Triangle Institute study of Drug Abuse Resistance Education
(DARE) found that "DARE's core curriculum effect on drug use relative to
whatever drug education (if any) was offered in the control schools is
slight and, except for tobacco use, is not statistically significant."
(Source: Ennett, S.T., et al., "How Effective Is Drug Abuse Resistance
Education? A Meta-Analysis of Project DARE Outcome Evaluations," American
Journal of Public Health, 84: 1394-1401 (1994).)

Dr. Dennis Rosenbaum, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago,
recently completed a six-year study of 1,798 students and found that "DARE
had no long-term effects on a wide range of drug use measures;" DARE does
not "prevent drug use at the stage in adolescent development when drugs
become available and are widely used, namely during the high school years;"
and that DARE may actually be counter productive. According to the study,
"there is some evidence of a boomerang effect among suburban kids.

That is, suburban students who were DARE graduates scored higher than
suburban students in the Control group on all four major drug use
measures." (Source: Rosenbaum, Dennis, Assessing the Effects of
School-based Drug Education: A Six Year Multilevel Analysis of Project
DARE, Abstract (April 6, 1998).)

MIKE RUFF

Candidate, City Council

District 3