THE DARE PROGRAM AND A PARENT'S CONCERNS

Dear Homeroom:

My child's fifth-grade class just completed the 17 sessions of DARE,
leaving me wondering whether the time allotted for this program is worth
the disruption of class work.

My child was 9 years old during the program. She and her friends still hold
hands. Some still sleep with stuffed animals, and most parents we know
still shield their 9-year-olds from the evening news. Yet the DARE program
explained to her the difference between Mexican heroin and Asian heroin,
that drugs are injected as well as inhaled, and that there is such a thing
as an 8-year-old alcoholic.

Are there any studies that have evaluated the effectiveness of the DARE
program or the question of age appropriateness?

Mary Kay Ricks

Silver Spring

Let me back up a minute for those readers who don't know what DARE is.

DARE, which stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, is a national
program run by law enforcement agencies. In this county, the city and
county police departments and the sheriff's office run it. Just about all
public elementary schools in Montgomery County have DARE, and many private
ones as well. (Some county middle schools follow up with the COP program -
Community Oriented Policing--to talk more about drugs and alcohol but also
about conflict resolution and ways to avoid violence.)

Part of DARE is something of a throwback to the old Officer Friendly
programs, bringing a police officer into the schools to make kids trust and
feel comfortable around officers.

The other part is a curriculum that mostly has to do with decision
making--teaching children that seemingly innocent choices can lead to bad
consequences. The officers also teach a lot about alcohol and drugs,
including tobacco, but police Sgt. Bill Whalen, who helps run the county's
DARE program, says that specifics like the difference between Mexican
heroin and Asian heroin are discussed only in answer to questions from
children. "Some kids come with a lot of information," he says.

Whalen says it is important to start educating children about drugs and
alcohol before middle school, where they are exposed to drug use.
"Eighth-graders in this county have either witnessed someone else their age
or have firsthand knowledge of someone their age using drugs or alcohol,"
he says. That's why DARE is in fifth grade, the last grade before middle
school.

Whether the program is effective or age-appropriate is really unknown. Just
about every survey of research on school-based drug programs I've seen has
concluded that we don't know whether any of them, including DARE, are
effective at preventing the illegal use of drugs and alcohol by teenagers
and young adults.

But, honestly, it's a difficult thing to get a handle on. We've seen drug
use increase during the time DARE and other programs have been in place,
but Whalen asks, "Would the increase have been greater without it?" and
there is no answer.

Without making great claims to the effectiveness, Whalen says: "If nothing
else, it's a positive message from a positive role model. Kids are going to
make their own decisions, but we've at least given them the information."

Although I like the Officer Friendly part, I remain a skeptic both about
whether DARE is effective and whether schools are the right venue for this
kind of program. I worry that DARE veers from being educational to being
propagandistic, which is by its nature noneducational.

So - I was wondering if there are any high school or college students who
went through the DARE program in fifth grade who could reflect on its
effectiveness, either for themselves or for their friends. Did it help them
get out of awkward peer-pressure situations gracefully? Did the information
they learned in DARE help them avoid a situation that, looking back on,
they recognize as dangerous? Was it a useful way to spend 13 or so hours?

This won't be what anyone would call a scientific survey, but it might be
interesting anyway.

[snip]