D.A.R.E. ME TO HAVE A CHEROOT

My youngest son announced the other day that he was about ready to start
playing "M"-rated video gems. That's "M" for mature.

He's only 11, so I asked him how this would be possible.

"Because now I know how to resist violence and drugs," he chirped. He
attributed this sudden strength of character to his successful completion
of a required D.A.R.E. class at his school.

I think the boy meant that he was more able, with this fabulous program's
vital information, to resist impulses of violence against others. I'm glad
about this, of course, just as I am pleased with his newfound shield
against the evils of illicit drugs.

According to my more cynical associates, this buffer will prevail for at
least 12 more months - until the kid is firmly locked into middle school
with drugs, sex, rock'n'roll, and smart-mouthed punks in every corridor.

The enthusiasm of the young for resisting wrong is perpetually refreshing.
I remember confessing to my mortal sins during a forced religious youth and
actually believing that I would never commit that particular sin ever
again, but my resolve always dissolved, victimized by common human
weakness. But this isn't about me, is it?

I'm writing this an hour or so before the young one's D.A.R.E. graduation
ceremonies. I was made to promise that I would stand and ask the question
that will be on everyone's lips: Why continue with an expensive program
that has been proven, over and over again, to be ineffective?

An ABC television news report on D.A.R.E.'s failure, aired just the day
before my son's D.A.R.E. event, even depicted the organization's well-paid
director admitting that the well-entrenched "educational" program doesn't work.

Timing of the televised news segment was fate, certainly not intended to
coincide with planned D.A.R.E. graduation fetes nationwide.

The ABC report pointed out that others have D.A.R.E.d to criticize D.A.R.E.
in the past, and in return these hapless critics have been vilified,
shouted down and accused of being soft on drug abuse. Any critic worth his
or her salt wouldn't be put off by this kind of abuse if it weren't for the
fact that it's coming from guys in blue wearing badges and side arms.

This inability of D.A.R.E. to accomplish its goals is not really
surprising. It is, after all, just another government-funded program,
brimming with false hope and built-in structural inadequacies, and facing
an inevitable doom. Its advocates don't teach, they preach, and as a result
they fail the long-term reach.

The basic problem with these programs is that they commence way too soon.
This premature evocation is based on the false premise that children can be
educated to avoid the festering cesspool of sinful delights and harmful
situations awaiting them. Don't-do-drugs-or-be-violent classes should be
administered in middle and high school, so the teaching officer can
accurately assess the percentage of stoned-to-the-bone students - and make
appropriate arrests.

Arrests not only maximize the utility of a police officer's classroom time,
but they're superlative teaching illustrations that could replace the
educational video.

This is not unlike putting another police officer on the streets.

As if to hone the canons of his new D.A.R.E.-injected, zero-tolerance
demeanor, my youngest asked me the other day, "Daddy, why do you do drugs?"

Nonplussed (or is that "plussed"?), I asked, "What in the bejeebers are you
talking about?"

He pointed to the can of Bud I clutched. And nailed my coffin shut with all
the scorn a kid can muster: "You smoke a cigar sometimes."

From the lips of a child, the truth was on the table.

I thought about the boy's comments that night as I fired up a cheroot,
wondering how long it will be before his pleasant, simple nature is
wrestled into submission by dark teenage impulses and formidable peer group
pressures.

This tumult will come to pass soon enough, and it will not be the legacy of
D.A.R.E. that the kid eventually reenters the human race as a responsible
adult. It will be through the parental efforts of his beer-swilling,
cigar-chomping father, and a mother who somehow neutralized surrounding evil.

An no small amount of luck.

[New Times' Editor's note:

New Times columnist Daniel Blackburn promises this is the last time he'll
mention his family.]