RESEARCHER DEFENDS PROGRAM, WANTS TO SEE STUDIES ON OTHERS

Jerry Stubben is evaluating Rock In Prevention while suggesting
improvements to it as an unpaid adviser.

Iowa State University researcher Jerry Stubben doesn't mince words when it
comes to all of the drug-prevention programs that are being funded by the
Iowa Department of Public Health.

"They have no evidence the money they're giving to many of these other
agencies is really effective," Stubben says. "I mean, they spend millions
of dollars on that crap."

Two years ago, Stubben was awarded a $298,000 federal grant to study Rock
In Prevention. He said his preliminary findings show that children exposed
to the program are less likely to use drugs than those who have never seen
Rock In Prevention. That, he said, makes the program better than others
addressing substance abuse on which the department is "wasting" tax dollars.

"There are people in Iowa who want (Rock In Prevention) to fail," he said.
"I mean, seriously, put this in your article: I would really like to see a
scientific evaluation of Character Counts, the DARE program and the (Just
Eliminate Lies) program that all these politicians are talking about. I
want to see it. I want to see a five-year study of these programs."

State records show more than half of the federal grant money that ISU has
received for Stubben's study of Rock In Prevention is to be spent by Rock
In Prevention itself, which is working as a "subcontractor" on the
federally funded project.

So far, the charity has spent about $125,000 of the money, with the single
largest expense being the purchase of $27,360 worth of compact discs from
the charity's executive director, Pat McManus. The grant application budget
also allows for the purchase of newsletters, travel expenses, computer
equipment and salaries.

Stubben said Rock In Prevention's role as a paid subcontractor and his own
role as an unpaid adviser and honorary board member for Rock In Prevention
don't diminish the independent nature of his work, which will be subject to
peer review.

He said the goal of the project is not merely to study the program's
effectiveness, but to make improvements in the way it's run. In fact,
Stubben said, he is advising McManus on the changes to make in Rock In
Prevention -changes that Stubben is now in the process of evaluating.

"To be blunt, I can make Pat do whatever I want him to do because we are
evaluating it," Stubben said.

Without that exchange of information and funding, he says, the university
can't control what's being evaluated. And that, he says, would skew the
findings of the study.

In 2001, Dr. Steve Gleason, the head of the Iowa Department of Public
Health, gave Rock In Prevention a letter stating that the organization had
met the department's "requirements for science-based outcomes and effective
evaluations."

Today, public health officials say that since Stubben's study has not yet
been completed, Rock in Prevention's effectiveness is unknown.

Gleason, who no longer works in state government, now serves on Rock In
Prevention's board of directors.