DO COPS DO DRUG ED RIGHT

Answers From Those Who've Been Through It Too Easy To Ignore

Programs that send uniformed police officers into classrooms to discourage
students from substance abuse are coming under scrutiny.

In Suffolk County, a task force created by the legislature is studying the
effectiveness of the Drug Awareness Resistance Education program, or DARE.
The study began after Suffolk Police Commissioner John Gallagher called for
ending the 17-week program in elementary and junior-high schools as early
as this fall, citing research questioning whether it works. The task force
is expected to release its findings in June.

In Nassau County, the Peer Resistance Instruction Drug Education program,
known as PRIDE, has been downsized due to budget cutbacks. The nine-week
program, similar to DARE, now lasts only one week. Three of the original 15
police officers still teach in the program.

Here, three writers share their experiences.

JOHNNY STEPS off the football field, exhilarated from another day of
football practice. As he heads toward the locker room, he is approached by
several of his less athletically inclined classmates. Dressed in black,
sneering, slouching and somehow always in shadow, they strike up a
conversation with Johnny. After a few minutes of small talk, one of the
boys in black opens his hand, revealing a myriad of candy-colored pills.
Johnny looks nervously from face to face, then confidently rejects the
offer, walking off with his football and letter jacket. Suddenly, the
lights go on, the inspirational anti-drug video is over and the students
leave class to face the world confident in their abilities to resist the
evils of narcotics.

Or are they? This is the scenario adults, administrators and police
officers would like to believe takes place-I saw the video in elementary
school when I went through PRIDE, a program similar to DARE-but it is
becoming painfully clear to critics of these drug-prevention programs that
this is not how the scene really plays out. Substance abuse in the real
world is far more complex. Outside of DARE (or PRIDE) dreamland, Johnny is
probably dealing those pills to his teammates.

Drugs are not just for the bad boys anymore, if they ever were. Today there
is an allure surrounding narcotics, one that entices many students to "try
it once." These program are failures because their whole goal is to shelter
young people-not to teach them what to do when the drug or drink might seem
appealing.

The mission of many high schoolers is not to avoid drugs but to see who has
the better hook-ups, from the boy who gets the keg for homecoming to the
girl who gets the Ecstasy before a rave. It's a badge of honor to be able
to dispense illegal goods at these parties, where there is often alcohol
and drugs anyway. This is not to say students are not aware of the downside
of substance abuse, just that programs such as DARE make it easy to ignore.
In overzealous anti-drug rhetoricsimilar to the film classic "Reefer
Madness," police officers outline the horrors of even experimenting with a
drug. Some students, seeing the real world around them, will scoff at the
information when they get older.

They enter high school realizing that scores of their friends are not dying
because of drug and alcohol abuse, as DARE-like programs tell us. Like it
or not, high school drug use is not a simple issue dispensed of by a weekly
pep talk and a bumper sticker.

Other options would lead to a debate similar to the one surrounding sex
education: Adults need to educate children in ways that would allow them to
safely conduct themselves around alcohol and drugs, recognizing that they
will be around it and probably be tempted to try it at some point in their
young lives.

Whatever the right option is, DARE and its kind are on their way out. Just
look at how it's become the laughing stock of teenagers nationwide: They
rummage through bins at thrift shops, find DARE T-shirts and wear them to raves.