DARE TO KNOW THE FACTS

Did Department of Public Safety officials bother to read any research
studies on DARE before donating tax dollars to the anti-drug program?
(Feb. 17 article, "Area DARE programs to get DPS checks to boost
efforts.") Every methodologically sound study of the program has found
it to be either ineffective or counterproductive. Minimizing substance
abuse requires strategies based on proven effectiveness, not "feel
good" programs that please parents, educators and police.

DARE should be scrapped entirely. The scare tactics used do more harm
than good. Students who realize they are being lied to about marijuana
often make the mistake of assuming that harder drugs are relatively
benign as well. This is a recipe for disaster.

DARE is part of the problem, not the solution. A federally funded
Research Triangle Institute study of Drug Abuse Resistance Education
found that "DARE's core curriculum effect on drug use relative to
whatever drug education (if any) was offered in the control schools is
slight and, except for tobacco use, is not statistically
significant."

Dr. Dennis Rosenbaum, a professor at the University of Illinois at
Chicago, recently completed a six-year study of 1,798 students and
found that "DARE had no long-term effects on a wide range of drug use
measures"; that " DARE does not "prevent drug use at the stage in
adolescent development when drugs become available and are widely
used, namely during the high school years"; and that DARE may actually
be counterproductive.

According to the study, "there is some evidence of a boomerang effect
among suburban kids. That is, suburban students who were DARE
graduates scored higher than suburban students in the Control group on
all four major drug use measures."

A California study of 5,000 students found that the Los Angeles-based
DARE program was ineffective in reducing drug use among
schoolchildren.