DARE DRUG-RESISTANCE CAMPAIGN, CALLED INEFFECTIVE, IS BEING RETOOLED

Studies Disparage National Program For Schoolchildren

In a striking shift, leaders of the nation's most widely used program
to discourage drug use among schoolchildren have acknowledged that
their strategy has not had sufficient impact and say they are
developing a new approach to spreading their message.

The DARE program, whose acronym stands for Drug Abuse Resistance
Education, has grown so rapidly since its founding 18 years ago that
it is now taught in 75 percent of school districts nationwide and in
54 other countries. Specially trained police officers who teach the
program have become central figures in the lives of elementary school
students, and the program's red logo has taken on iconic status on
T-shirts and bumper stickers in thousands of communities.

But with criticism of the program's effectiveness increasing, DARE
officials and independent researchers have quietly worked for two
years to develop a new curriculum and plan to introduce it in
Washington today. Controlled studies of about 50,000 students will
begin in six cities and their suburbs in the fall.

DARE has long dismissed criticism of its approach as flawed or the
work of groups that favor decriminalization of drug use. But the body
of research had grown to the point that the organization could no
longer ignore it.

In the past two months alone, both the U.S. surgeon general and the
National Academy of Sciences have issued reports saying DARE's
approach is ineffective, and several cities, most recently Salt Lake
City, have discontinued the program.

The revisions also reflect a broader shift in efforts to dissuade
children from using drugs. Founded by the Los Angeles Police
Department in 1983 amid a raging drug epidemic, DARE was infused by
the spirit of then-first lady Nancy Reagan's ``Just Say No''
approach. The new strategy reflects research that criticized that
approach as simplistic, and other research that suggested that the
DARE program occasionally encourages drug use, particularly among
suburban youth, by making it seem more prevalent than it is.

``Our feeling was, after looking at the prevention movement, we were
not having enough of an impact,'' said Herbert D. Kleber, the head of
DARE's scientific advisory panel who is also medical director of the
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University. ``There was a marked rise in drug use. Our job was to
answer the question, how can we make it better?''

DARE is also responding to a new hard-nosed mentality among federal
education officials, who distribute about $500 million in
drug-prevention grants each year. Starting last year, the Department
of Education said it would no longer let schools spend money from its
office of safe and drug-free schools on DARE because department
officials do not consider it scientifically proven. The new
curriculum buys DARE time to prove that it does work.

The DARE approach has been an amalgam of different messages about
drug abuse and violence, but at its core it involves police officers
visiting elementary school classrooms to tell students about the
dangers of drugs and the importance of self-esteem, and offering them
different ways to say ``No.''

``There's quite a bit we can do to make it better and we realize
that,'' said Glenn Levant, president and founding director of DARE
America, based in Los Angeles. ``I'm not saying it was effective, but
it was state of the art when we launched it. Now it's time for
science to improve upon what we're doing.''

The new DARE program is being developed at the University of Akron in
Ohio by Zili Sloboda, who as director of the National Institute on
Drug Abuse wrote a list of principles to guide drug-prevention
programs. It is being underwritten by a $13.7 million grant from the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

One six-year study conducted by the University of Illinois found that
the program's effects wore off by senior year of high school; in
fact, it detected some increased use of drugs by suburban high
schoolers who had taken the program.

A 10-year study conducted by the University of Kentucky found that
the DARE program had no effect on students by the time they were 20
years old.

The new program will work to change the perception of social norms
among students.

The idea is based on the belief that traditional prevention programs
may lead students to overestimate how many of their peers are using
drugs. That, in turn, may influence more to aspire to that ``norm.''

The new strategy will shift the program's focus from fifth grade to
seventh grade, and adds a booster program in ninth grade, because
students in the higher grades are more likely to experiment with
drugs. Students do more role playing, with an emphasis on how to make
decisions, and talk about the effect of media and advertising.

``They're more savvy than they were before, they're maturing much
earlier than they used to,'' Levant said. ``We need something that
the kids will consider hip and cool and effective.''

Sloboda said that as head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse,
she had been concerned that DARE was not a proven program. But, she
and others emphasized, it is far from the only program that does not
work -- it has simply drawn the most criticism because it is the
largest.

The two most frequently cited of more than 30 studies of the DARE
program both reached the same conclusion: Any effect the program has
in deterring drug use disappears as students reach senior year of
high school or enter college.

Researchers complained that communities were mistaking the program's
popularity for effectiveness.