DARE TO CHANGE

A Worthwhile Update Of An Anti-Drug Program

THE DARE program, the most widely used anti-drug education program in
the nation, is getting a major overhaul. The new approach is promising
because it will target older students and require their active
participation in the program, rather than just listening to a lecture.
But DARE may also need other changes.

The existing DARE program, which was started in 1983 and is used in
almost every school district in North Jersey, is aimed at elementary
school students and based on the "just say no" philosophy popular
during the Reagan years. Police officers visit classrooms and talk to
students about the dangers of drugs and how to avoid them.

But growing evidence indicates that the deterrent effect of this
approach wears off as kids get older, especially in the last year of
high school and beyond. Both the U.S. surgeon general and the National
Academy of Sciences have said DARE isn't working. In fact, some
studies indicate the program might actually be counter-productive, if
it gives kids the impression that drug use is prevalent among teens.

The new approach is more hands-on. It will have police officers do
more coaching and less lecturing. Students in seventh and ninth grades
are targeted, and the strategy includes a big emphasis on role-playing
and group discussion. The focus is on decision-making skills and on
getting the kids to challenge common adolescent assumptions about
drugs: that they are cool, that they are necessary to fit in, that
"everyone's doing it."

A five-year pilot program will begin in September in six cities and
their surrounding suburbs, although none in New Jersey. DARE officials
want to monitor the new approach and make sure it's effective before
implementing it more widely.

Among the questions they should be asking is whether rank-and-file
police officers are qualified to coach adolescents and whether police
officers are the best people to counteract the dangerous assumption
among some teenagers that drugs are cool.

The premises of the new approach are appealing: helping kids to think
and make decisions for themselves, to resist peer pressure, and to
talk to each other and challenge each other, rather than accept -- or
reject -- the advice of one authority figure.

But the program won't work unless teenagers identify with the people
running it.