RESEARCHERS SEE PROMISE IN OVERHAULED VERSION OF D.A.R.E. CURRICULUM

WASHINGTON - An overhauled version of the D.A.R.E. anti-drug program shows
promising results in early trials, researchers said. The results suggest
that extending the fifth-grade program to middle school and high school
might help children resist drugs as they get older.

Researchers found that seventh-graders in six cities, including St. Louis,
who took part in the new curriculum were more likely to find using drugs
socially inappropriate than a control group, were better at refusing drugs
and had fewer misconceptions about how many of their peers use drugs. They
were also less likely to say they would use inhalants.

"It shows us that the program is doing what it intended to do, and in a
very significant way," said Zili Sloboda, an epidemiologist at the
Institute for Health and Social Policy at the University of Akron.

The university is releasing the results today.

Sloboda, who led the study, said it's too early to tell whether the new
program will have a significant impact on drug use but expected that a
follow-up program in high school would help children stay off drugs just as
pressure to use them begins in earnest.

More than 3,000 seventh-graders at 40 schools in the St. Louis area are
included in the study. Half of those schools are in the control group and
half have received the new D.A.R.E. curriculum, a study spokeswoman said.

Some of the St. Louis-area districts involved are De Soto, Fox, Meramec
Valley, North St. Francois County, St. Charles, St. Louis Public Schools
and Windsor.

The 15,500 students in the study, now eighth-graders, will be tested again
toward the end of this school year and will get a "booster course" in ninth
grade. Researchers plan to follow the students until their junior year in
high school.

D.A.R.E., or Drug Abuse Resistance Education, was created by police
officers in Los Angeles in 1983, to teach fifth-graders about the dangers
of drugs. The program has been implemented in 80 percent of school
districts in the United States, but over the past few years critics have
said it doesn't work.

A study in August by the University of North Carolina found that several
top anti-drug programs, including the original version of D.A.R.E., were
either ineffective or hadn't been sufficiently tested.

Other researchers have found that illegal drug use among teenagers has
remained level or decreased over the past few years, partly because adults
are warning students about drugs and encouraging kids to nurture other
interests.

The new D.A.R.E. curriculum will target students not only in fifth grade,
but in seventh and ninth grades as well. Teachers will help teach lessons,
unlike the current program, which is taught largely by police officers.

A study spokeswoman said the D.A.R.E. officers assigned to each school play
the role of facilitator rather than instructor in the new program. The
students work in small groups.

Sloboda said the new program also will involve more lifelike situations and
help students confront peer pressure more effectively.

Sue Foster, director of policy research and analysis at the National Center
on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, said she is
encouraged that the new D.A.R.E. program includes more lessons with
real-life situations, and that teachers are asked to become more involved.
But she said curriculum-based programs such as D.A.R.E. "are of inherently
limited value" because they don't address many reasons children might turn
to drugs.

"If we really want to be serious about preventing substance abuse, we have
to take a far more comprehensive view," she said. "We have to think about
what schools can do to increase kids' attachment to schools, to make sure
drugs aren't available at school."

The study, financed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is following
students in Detroit; Houston; Los Angeles; Newark, N.J.; and New Orleans;
as well as St. Louis.