TRUTH OR D.A.R.E.

A New Drug Course

Under fire for being ineffective, the nation's largest substance-abuse
prevention program last week announced it's changing tack. "It's a new
millennium, a new era, and we have a new program," says Nancy Kaufman, vice
president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is funding the $13.7
million project to revamp D.A.R.E., the ubiquitous Drug Abuse Resistance
Education curriculum that now reaches 36 million pupils in 80 percent of
the nation's school districts.

The new and improved D.A.R.E. will debut in 80 high schools and 176 middle
schools this fall. The question is whether it will work better than the old
program, launched by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1983. The
challenge is huge. According to a University of Michigan survey, half of
all high school seniors have experimented with drugs, and 1 in 4 graduates
is a regular user. One third reportedly indulge in binge drinking.

The new D.A.R.E. breaks from the past in several significant ways.
Just-say-no lectures will vanish in favor of role-playing sessions and
other guided group activities. "Let's not talk about it-let's do it, and
then we'll talk about it" is the driving philosophy, explains Prof. Richard
Hawthorne, a curriculum expert at the University of Akron, which developed
the new program and will monitor the results. The target audience is older,
too: D.A.R.E. will now focus on seventh and ninth graders.

A pilot program in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, has drawn raves. Sill Middle
School student Megan Ohls, 13, who took the class last fall, said pictures
of damaged brains "got our attention that alcohol is not the answer." One
thing that won't change: Police officers will still sound the message. If
the research is clear on anything, it's that the presence of a responsible,
caring adult is key.