D.A.R.E.: THE NEVER-ENDING FOLLY

Good Intentions Don't Make Up For Fact Program Doesn't Work and Never Has

Politics trumped science once again with President Bush's official
proclamation that today is "National D.A.R.E. Day." Bush declared, "Across
America, law enforcement officers, volunteers, parents and teachers are
helping to send the right message to our nation's youth about illegal drugs
and violence through the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) Program."

Yet despite 22 years of drug-free pledges, T-shirts and bumper stickers,
and plenty of abstinence-only rhetoric, the brainchild of Los Angeles
Police Chief Daryl Gates does not seem to be getting the "right message"
across to the D.A.R.E. generation, many of whom are saying maybe or
sometimes or even yes to alcohol and other drugs. As in years past, the
2004 Monitoring the Future (www.monitoringthefuture. org) survey of high
school students' alcohol and other drug use revealed that three-quarters
admitted to using alcohol prior to graduation and half had tried illegal drugs.

Dismissal of "just say no" is so widespread that even the Bush twins were
caught imbibing before they were of legal drinking age - by the
authorities, not their parents.

One has to wonder whether the president does his homework before issuing
proclamations. Evaluations over the past decade have consistently found, as
the General Accounting Office noted after assessing the research, that
"D.A.R.E. had no statistically significant long-term effect on preventing
youth illicit drug use." To add to the ever-growing chorus, the surgeon
general, the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. and California
Departments of Education, the American Federation of Teachers and the
California School Boards Association have all concluded D.A.R.E. to be
ineffective.

By officially praising D.A.R.E., Bush not only demonstrates a fundamental
disregard for science, but also contradicts his own education policy. The
No Child Left Behind Act recommends only programs approved by the Center
for Substance Abuse Prevention. D.A.R.E. is glaringly absent from that
prized list of "evidence-based" drug education programs. Nevertheless,
while Los Angeles and New York City finally gave D.A.R.E. the ax last year,
the program is still used in 251 districts in California.

Sacrificing sound programs in favor of doctrine - a palpable disservice to
teens - is also apparent with the parallel issue of sexuality education.
The House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform found that
federally funded, abstinence-only sex education programs, which now
dominate the terrain, deliver distorted and inaccurate information about
contraception and sexually transmitted diseases.

Just this month, authors of a joint Yale/Columbia University research study
reported on the impact of teenage virginity pledges pushed by the "True
Love Waits" movement. In the Journal of Adolescent Health, sociologists
Hannah Bruckner and Peter Bearman documented that the majority of pledgers
ultimately had sex before marriage; were less likely to use condoms than
their nonpledging counterparts; and that those who considered themselves
virgins were "more likely to substitute oral and/or anal sex for vaginal sex."

The ultimate bit of bad news: There was no difference in rates of sexually
transmitted disease in pledgers and nonpledgers. The authors' conclusion:
"The all-or-nothing approach advocated by many abstinence-only programs may
create additional barriers to knowledge and protection for adolescents."

We hear lots of rhetoric these days about family values and safety. As the
mother of four, I share other parents' concerns about the worrisome issues
of sex and drugs. Abstinence, of course, would be ideal for teenagers. But
in the end, we have no choice but to accept the reality that young people
make their own decisions, which are not always consistent with our preferences.

When policy-makers advocate rigid, abstinence-only drug and sex education
programs of questionable value, to the exclusion of safety-oriented
approaches that dare to provide an honest, comprehensive fallback strategy,
they put our young people in real jeopardy. If sex and drug prevention
programs prohibit the discussion of practical information about how to take
precautions if one is not abstinent, they are neither education nor protection.