DRUG EDITORIAL BANG ON

Dear Editor,

Your December 13 editorial offered excellent advice on preventing
adolescent substance abuse. The importance of parental involvement
in reducing drug use cannot be overstated. School-based
extracurricular activities also have been shown to reduce use. They
keep kids busy during the hours they're most likely to get into trouble.

In order for drug prevention efforts to effectively reduce harm, they
must be reality-based. The most popular drug and the one most
closely associated with violent behavior is often over-looked by
parents. That drug is alcohol, and it takes far more lives each year
than all illegal drugs combined. Alcohol may be legal, but it's
still the number one drug problem.

For decades, school-based drug prevention efforts have been dominated
by sensationalist programs like Drug Abuse Resistance
Education. Good intentions are no substitute for effective drug
education. Independent evaluations of DARE have found the program to
be either ineffective or counterproductive. The scare tactics used
do more harm than good.

Students who realize they've been lied to about marijuana may make
the mistake of assuming that harder drugs like methamphetamine are
relatively harmless as well. This is a recipe for disaster. Drug
education programs must be reality-based or they may backfire when
kids are inevitably exposed to drug use among their peers.

The following U.S. Government Accounting Office report confirms my
claims regarding DARE: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03172r.pdf

Robert Sharpe

MPA Policy Analyst

Common Sense for Drug Policy

Washington, DC