DARE HANGING ON AS IT TESTS PROGRAMS TO RETAIN RELEVANCY

It used to be that a frying egg was enough to persuade kids to keep
their brains off drugs.

Or so parents and teachers and drug prevention gurus
thought.

They also believed that DARE, a program created by police in the gang-
and drug-ridden sections of Los Angeles, would steer - or scare - kids
away from the same temptations.

The beloved program, which has police officers preaching the dangers
of drugs, is well-funded and defended, even years after multiple
researchers and the surgeon general's office said it didn't do enough
to keep kids clean.

In Ohio, more than $3 million is still spent on the program each year
by the attorney general's office. The money comes from a fee that
drivers are charged to reinstate suspended licenses and is distributed
as grants to 222 law enforcement agencies.

Attorney General Jim Petro has fought to maintain the flow of money,
according to his spokeswoman, Kim Norris.

In 2003, he testified in a Senate hearing asking for lawmakers to
restore the program after it was removed in the budget process.

Petro knows the program needs to be modified to include additional
exposure for middle school students, Norris said.

The U.S Department of Education severed ties with the program in 2000,
saying it wasn't scientifically proven to work. Schools can no longer
use money from federal Safe and Drug Free Schools grants to pay for
DARE.

The Ohio Department of Education discontinued funding last year. But
schools can still offer DARE if they choose to and if they pay for it,
said department spokesman J.C. Benton.

Meanwhile, new techniques - based on science and research - are being
piloted for today's savvy students that are way ahead of frying eggs
and long lectures about what marijuana use does to brain cells.

Future drug prevention techniques include having students examine
medical scans of brains on drugs to see the effects. And as part of
the "New DARE" developed at the University of Akron for seventh- and
ninth-graders, police officers act more as coaches for kids, instead
of lecturers.

The program, which is being tested on 19,000 students in six U.S
cities, is two years into a five-year study and showed positive
results at the end of 2003, according to Nancy Dudley, a Washington,
D.C.-based spokeswoman for New DARE.

None of the cities is in Ohio, said Dudley. But some of the concepts
may be trickling into existing programs.

Geauga County has stood by the program, and DARE officer Joe Keough,
from the county's sheriff office, said this year his curriculum has
changed.

"We no longer lecture, we facilitate," he said. "We give students the
facts and let them come to the conclusions on their own."

He said there will be more emphasis on following up with middle school
students to reinforce what is taught in elementary school.

"Nothing's perfect," Keough said. "You have to evaluate and make
adjustments. If I thought there was a better program out there, I'd
use it."

In seven Northeast Ohio counties, more than $1 million in DARE money
was given to 61 police departments and sheriff's offices for the
2003-2004 school year. In the rest of the country, Dudley said, DARE
has taken a hit, although she said it is still the "grandfather of
drug prevention programs" for kids.

Dudley dismisses some of DARE' s criticisms.

"DARE never made any claim that kids wouldn't ever do drugs," she
said. "Prevention is like a vaccine. It doesn't work forever. You
still need booster shots."

She also said that 20 years ago when DARE spread rapidly around the
nation, drug prevention wasn't even considered a scientific endeavor.

Dudley said Ohio's expenditures on the imperfect program are
preventing the death of DARE while the new programs are being created
and tested.

If the state cut the money, it might be impossible to ever get it
again. "It's like throwing out the whole car because part of the
engine is broken."

Toledo police dropped DARE in 2002, citing research that showed the
program didn't prevent drug use as students got older. So did Cincinnati.

But many cities in Ohio that have scaled back or dropped the program
did so for budgetary reasons. The grants from the state only pay for
half the DARE officer's salary.

Cleveland slashed its program as part of recent budget cuts. Avon Lake
dropped the program in 2000 after a longtime instructor retired.

The Lake County sheriff's of fice started its own program financed
with a countywide levy. About $117,000 has been spent in each of the
last three years. Retired officers and teachers run the program, which
includes more broad-based decision-making skills.

Macedonia, which has had the program for 14 years, lost it's fulltime
DARE and school resource officer when he took a promotion to sergeant
and the city didn't have money to replace him.

That officer had been shared with schools in several neighboring
towns, Chief Jon Golden said.

"Money is tight and everybody is just tightening the belt to notches
that don't exist," Golden said.