DARE SCARE TACTICS

Editor: Annette Varner's Oct. 2 letter to the editor on the Drug Abuse
Resistance Education program raised some very important points. The
importance of parental involvement in preventing drug use cannot be
understated. Student involvement in extracurricular activities has also
been shown to reduce drug use.

As for the DARE program, good intentions are no substitute for effective
anti-drug education. Every independent, methodologically sound evaluation
of DARE has found the program to be either ineffective or
counterproductive. The scare tactics DARE uses do more harm than good.
Students who realize they are being lied to about marijuana often make the
mistake of assuming that harder drugs are relatively harmless as well. This
is a recipe for disaster. After almost two decades of DARE, heroin use
among high school seniors in the U.S. has reached record levels. Anti-drug
education programs need to be reality-based or they may backfire when kids
are inevitably exposed to drug use among their peers. To verify record
levels of heroin use, please visit the Monitoring the Future site at:
http://www.monitoringthefuture.org

Robert Sharpe

The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation Washington, D.C.