IT'S TIME TO SHOW D.A.R.E. THE DOOR

Year after year, about 80 percent of the elementary school districts in the
country allocate resources and classroom time for a curriculum that simply
doesn't work, and few of them seem to care.

A recent study at the University of Kentucky is only the latest in an
impressive body of research showing that D.A.R.E., a popular anti-drug
program, does virtually nothing to keep kids off drugs. Yet thousands of
schools each year put their pupils--some as early as first grade--through
it.

D.A.R.E., which stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, is taught by
local police officers, who go into the schools to give kids information
about drugs, tobacco and alcohol abuse and, in theory, to help them develop
the skills necessary to resist peer pressure to experiment with those
substances. The program, which includes lessons on self-esteem,
assertiveness and stress management, uses everything from free T-shirts to
"graduation" certificates to a trendy Web site in order to appeal to
youngsters.

And if success were measured in the number of T-shirts given away or
certificates handed out, D.A.R.E. would indeed be successful. But it's not.

The Kentucky study, published this month in the Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology, found that kids from the D.A.R.E. program used drugs in
high school at about the same rate as their peers. An earlier study by the
University of Illinois at Chicago had come to the same conclusion.

Why don't schools show D.A.R.E. the door? Maybe because it isn't costing
them much--funding comes from local sources and from federal grants--and it
makes teachers and administrators feel they're doing something to address a
very real problem.

What a waste! There's got to be a better way to educate young people about
the hazards of substance abuse, but as long as a high-profile
pseudo-solution is available, there's little incentive to find out what
might really work. And that's the sad part--especially for the kids this
program ought to be helping.