WHAT'S WRONG WITH DARE, CHIEF DORSCH ASKS?

DARE's message is delivered by police officers, not teachers. Police
officers are quasi-military personnel and have no training as professional
teachers.

Teachers encourage free discussion and disagreement. Disagreeing with a
DARE police officer about any aspect of drugs, drug laws or policies is the
fast track to a police investigation of the student and the student's family.

What's wrong with the message that many drug laws suck, or have shamefully
racist consequences? But a student would be a fool to say it in a
junior-high DARE class.

Of course it's thrilling to see junior high school students echoing
photocopied bumper-stickers about drugs, alcohol, authority and police.
What choice do they have under the gun-toting "peer pressure" in a police
DARE class?

One lesson a healthy community should recall from Nazi Germany and the Cold
War is the aggressive mass-brainwashing of children police states use to
insure conformity and obedience. Schools are supposed to promote and
encourage diversity of thought, not a uniform creed introduced by police.

The bottom line - literally - is that DARE has never been able to
demonstrate that it accomplishes the drug-use reduction it promises; some
studies indicate it has quite the opposite effect.

It's feel-good, high-pressure, law-and-order, conformist classroom candy
that principals can point to as a tough anti-drug program. But it isn't
school, it's not the American tradition, and it doesn't work.

Robert Merkin, Northampton, Mass.