ENHANCED PROGRAM IS BETTER AT DRUG PREVENTION

An anti-drug program widely criticized for being ineffective can have a
noticeable impact when it's supplemented in middle schools, a new study
shows. The study, appearing this month in the Archives of Pediatrics &
Adolescent Medicine, evaluates the program known as Drug Abuse Resistance
Education, or DARE, and an enhanced version, DARE Plus. Both programs try
to reduce drug use and violence. In DARE, police officers taught children
citizenship skills, how to resist pressure to use drugs and how to handle
violent situations. DARE Plus included exercises such as a peer-led program
focusing on the influences of social groups, media and role models.

Scientists from the University of Minnesota studied children starting in
seventh grade at 24 schools, most of them in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
Children in schools using only the DARE program fared about the same as
those using no DARE program.

But at the schools offering DARE Plus, boys were less likely to use
tobacco, alcohol or multiple drugs and were less likely to be a victim of
violence, compared with those from schools without DARE. Also, boys at DARE
Plus schools were less likely to use tobacco or be violent than those at
DARE-only schools. No major effects were seen in girls.