DARE TO BE DIFFERENT

Long-running Drug Prevention Program Sees Changes, Possible Cuts

The future of Oklahoma's largest and most-recognized anti-drug
campaign is in doubt.

This year, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program -- DARE -- was
funded by a $42,742 Justice Assistance Block Grant. That grant
expires in October, said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. Herbert
McDonald, the state's DARE coordinator.

The controversial program can be expensive for smaller agencies and
has been both criticized and praised in numerous studies since the
1990s. DARE police officers who teach its curriculum must be
re-certified every year, McDonald said, and the state DARE office
handles those classes, as well as the training of new officers.

If that state office closes, it would mean that about 240 Oklahoma
schools and 100 school districts would lose the program, because
local law enforcement agencies can't absorb training costs, officials said.

"We've got 81 different PD and sheriff's offices that are involved in
DARE," McDonald said.

To save the local program, its organizers within the state Department
of Public Safety, which oversees the Highway Patrol, will seek money
during the next legislative session in February, McDonald said.

The public safety department has given program operators enough money
to operate until the legislative session.

The number of programs using DARE nationwide dipped three or four
years ago, said DARE America Regional Director John Lindsay. A
revision of the program changed the curriculum to involve students more.

"What the new DARE does is it puts that officer in the role of the
facilitator, where he or she is drawing the answers out of the
students," Lindsay said. Previously, the officer would simply lecture
students on the dangers of drug use.

Also, the course was shortened from 17 weeks to 10 weeks, helping
streamline it. "It's much more than the old-fashioned, 'Just Say No'
campaign," Lindsay said.

The Critics

The Bartlesville Police Department had a DARE program when Chief Leo
Willey arrived in 2000, but Willey said it was never comprehensive,
and he discontinued it three years ago.

"You can only do what you can pay for," Willey said. "We used to have
a grant that started that. We had a school resource officers program,
too, on a grant."

The city provided equipment such as cars and uniforms, Willey said,
and the schools supplied the students and classrooms.

Federal funds quit coming, and Willey later cut DARE.

John Hamill, Tulsa Public Schools spokesman, said his district
dropped DARE about six or seven years ago. He compared DARE to
efforts such as the 1936 film "Reefer Madness."

"In other words, I got the standard 'Marijuana will make you go
blind, grow hair on your palms and you'll go crazy' when I was at
Edison in the '50s. That stuff didn't work," Hamill said.

And DARE, when it was eliminated in Tulsa schools, wasn't
research-based at the time, Hamill said, adding that programs that
teach better decision making are more successful.

During his career, Willey said he's seen more studies criticizing
DARE than studies that found it to be successful.

For example, a 1999 study - cited in an August 2000 Harvard Mental
Health Letter - surveyed 1,002 men and women from ages 19 to 21 who
had drug education training or DARE in the sixth grade.

The study determined that the individuals' drug use, attitudes,
self-esteem and peer pressure resistance hadn't changed from when
they were surveyed before they'd been exposed to DARE, the report
states. In response, Lindsay said in 2000 the National Medical
Association evaluation found the program's training cut teenage smoking rates.

Also, a study of 3,150 Ohio high school juniors found that the
students who completed at least two DARE semesters in elementary
school were less likely to become high-risk substance abusers, states
an article in Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Weekly published in 1998.

More results are yet to come. Lindsay pointed to an unfinished Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation-funded study conducted by the University of
Akron that has yielded promising preliminary results.

The about $13 million, five-year study is nearly complete, Lindsay
said, and surveys 19,000 students from 122 middle schools and 83 high
schools, DARE reports.

The University of Akron researchers testing DARE are the same ones
who helped devised its new curriculum.

DARE In McAlester

Clyde Heathcock, director of school safety for McAlester Public
Schools, has a staff of only three officers, including himself. But
both of his officers teach DARE in the classroom while serving as
guards for the district's schools.

Whatever the researchers say, Heathcock said having an officer
interacting with the school children at an early age makes DARE worthwhile.

"Where I really see the benefit of it is that relationship that these
kids - these fourth- and fifth-graders and seventhgraders - receive
with the officers in the classroom with them," Heathcock said.
"Whenever they have a problem, they don't just see us as that
authority figure that they see on TV."

That relationship helps police address problems that develop later
because they already have the bond with students, he said.

The campus police first started DARE in 2000 when McAlester police
had several DARE officers, Heathcock said. Later, the police
discontinued their program and Heathcock's officers now conduct it
alone. They taught about 1,500 students last year, he said.

One officer teaches the class, leaving two officers to handle
anything that happens at the other area schools, Heathcock said.

"It's hard on a small agency to get out and do that, but we're
willing to make that sacrifice for the end results," he said.

The campus police didn't receive enough donations this year for the
program, so they had to use money left over from last year to teach
this year's class, Heathcock said.

They've spent $1,700 on class materials this year, exhausting what
was left, Lt. Brenda Kelley-Fields said.

"What we buy from now on will be out of our pockets or donations,"
Kelley- Fields said.

Despite that, Kelley-Fields said DARE is worth it. She sees the
results when former students come home from college and thank her for
what she taught them about substance abuse.

"I believe the DARE program works, because if we don't educate our
children on the consequences of drugs and alcohol, the drug problem
will progressively get worse," Kelley-Fields said.

"The alcohol problem will progressively get worse. Our crime rate's
going to increase because where there are drugs and alcohol, there's crime."

[Sidebar]

About DARE

DARE can be found in 75 percent of schools nationwide, the
organization reports. The program has been in Oklahoma since 1985,
Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. Herbert McDonald said.

It was founded in 1983 in Los Angeles and some studies published in
the 1990s stated that, despite its aggressive marketing, DARE's
approach wasn't significantly affecting whether or not children use drugs.

To learn its curriculum, DARE officers go through 80 hours of
training, which now certifies them as school resource officers and
trains them in middle school and elementary school courses, DARE
America Regional Director John Lindsay said.

DARE seems to be rebounding - possibly because of the new curriculum,
Lindsay said.

DARE is online at dare.com.