AS OTHERS SAY IT . . .

After months of criticism, the people who head the nationwide DARE program
have admitted their program is a failure. Officials of the program, whose
acronym stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, said they are coming up
with a revamped program - one they have been working on for two years.

This raises several question, not the least of which is why DARE's leaders
strongly defended it against recent criticisms when they apparently knew at
least some of the complaints were true. For two years they have been
working quietly on changes based on evidence that DARE wasn't working, yet
they were happy to continue accepting taxpayer money from school districts.
Not only that, they often impugned the motives of their critics, attacking
them as hiding an agenda to legalize drugs.

Recently, studies by the National Academy of Sciences and the surgeon
general have shown the program to be flawed. Now the program's critics have
gained a good measure of credibility.

- - The Deseret News, Salt Lake City