SCHOOL ANTI-DRUG EFFORT TRIES NEW APPROACH

DARE Ineffective, Studies Showed

The nation's largest in-school drug-prevention program is testing a new
curriculum in six cities after weathering more than a decade of complaints
that its approach is outmoded and ineffective.

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program, which is taught in 80%
of U.S. schools and reaches 36 million youths annually, will shift its
focus from lectures by uniformed police officers to interactive discussions
and role-playing activities about making healthy choices. Police officers
will serve as facilitators.

The new curriculum will be tested on about 50,000 students in 80 high
schools and their 176 feeder middle schools in six metropolitan areas.
Likely locations for the pilot program include Detroit, Los Angeles, New
York City and Houston.

The schools will begin teaching the new curriculum in September. University
of Akron researchers will monitor the program and students for five years
to gauge its effectiveness. The study and new curriculum are funded with a
$ 13.7 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"This is a major revision," says Glenn Levant, president of DARE America.
"This is a cutting-edge incorporation of the very latest science-based
prevention techniques."

DARE also will offer a free, revised curriculum for parent education in
September.

The revisions to DARE come after several studies indicated parental
involvement is the most critical factor in youths' decisions not to use drugs.

DARE has gotten mixed reviews since its creation by the Los Angeles Police
Department in 1983. As early as 1987, studies found many aspects of the
program made no difference in whether youths rejected drugs.

In 1990, a Canadian study found DARE had "no significant effect" on
students' use of tobacco, beer, marijuana, acid, wine, heroin, crack and
other illegal or regulated substances.

In 1991, a study of Kentucky students by the National Institute of Drug
Abuse found no difference in the percentage of new users of cigarettes,
alcohol and marijuana between kids who took part in a DARE program and
those who did not. A study of 5,000 California students in 1995 said that
programs such as DARE that rely on anti-drug lectures lacked credibility
among teens.

DARE, a non-profit group with a $ 227 million annual budget, including $
1.7 million in federal funds, often fought such criticism by attacking the
studies and offering more positive research.