DO WE DARE SAY IT?

A Popular Drug-Abuse Education Program Promises More Than It Delivers

The D.A.R.E. program-the acronym stands for Drug Abuse Resistance
Education-is surely the most successful of various school-based programs
designed to prevent young people from trying alcohol, tobacco and various
illicit drugs-at least in terms of adoption and reach. Created in 1983 by
then-Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, it had been adopted for use in
more than half of U.S. school districts, in all 50 states, by 1996. D.A.R.E.
America, the California corporation that controls curriculum endorsements
from educators, law-enforcement personnel and media.

In terms of effectiveness at reducing drug use by young people, however, the
picture is not so pleasant. The Santa Monica-based Rand Corporation last
month published an exhaustive book attempting to measure the
cost-effectiveness of school-based drug-prevention programs ("An Ounce of
Prevention, A Pound of Uncertainty") that dismissed D.A.R.E. in three
sentences. The Rand researchers decided not to study all programs but only
those it considers the "best-practice" available. Why?

"First, the results of some evaluations suggest that average school-based
programs have little effect or none at all; where there is no effectiveness,
cost-effectiveness analysis is of no utility. The most widely used
prevention program is DARE, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, which has
received hegher ratings than many other programs on the basis of the content
of the program. However, it seems to have only modest effects on most of
what it seeks to influence, and it has essentially no effect on marijuana
use at follow-up (Tobler 1997) ..."

That dismissal turns out to be a fairly accurate summary of the scholarly
studies done on D.A.R.E. A Justice Department-sponsored study by the
Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina in 1993 that sought to
summarizer the results of recent studies, concluded that D.A.R.E. has a
"limited to essentially non-existent effect on drug use." A U.S. General
Accounting Office report ("Confronting the Drug Problem," GAO/GGD-93-82)
concluded that none of the "resistance training" programs like D.A.R.E. has
reduced the use of drugs by
adolescents.

An April 1997 article on D.A.R.E. in the journal "Health Education and
Behavior" by William Hansen and Ralph McNeal Jr. noted that "Analyses
revealed that the D.A.R.E. program had nonsignificant effects on alcohol
use, illegal drug use, steroid use, inhalant use and drug selling and
dealing. Only main effects on smoking cigarettes and smokeless tobacco were
significant. Thus, with the exception of tobacco, the program failed to
significantly lower all of the substances measured. This finding
corroborates previous research findings."

So D.A.R.E., for all its popularity, probably doesn't work.

'PSYCHOLOGICALLY UNSOUND'

Rudi Krause of Fullerton, who for several years has conducted an
anti-D.A.R.E. campaign he modestly dubs the "DAREGate Investigation" thinks
the reason is simple. "When you associate the word 'dare' with drugs," he
told me, "you're sending a powerful subliminal message that kids take as a
dare to do drugs. Choosing the 'dare' word was such an obvious mistake that
educators should have known it from the start. Had they done an educational
impact study as was required by law they would have known, but they didn't
D.A.R.E. was allowed to get off the
ground without one page of supportive scientific documentation behind it."

Krause is an athlete and substitute teacher who has been involved in
drug-education programs since the 1970s. He says he got interested by
talking to kids about D.A.R.E. and finding that, as he puts it, "kids take
dare as a dare to do drugs. They say it means 'Drugs Are Really Expensive,'
Drugs Are Really Exciting,' or Dare to Do It.''' He has interviewed
thousands of kids informally, finding that many can't tell you what D.A.R.E.
is supposed to stand for.

In 1993 he started investigating D.A.R.E. He discovered that it was begun
without preliminary studies or supporting papers.

When the state of California issued new Principles of Effectiveness for
school-based drug-education programs in 1997, he used them to scrutinize
D.A.R.E. Among the criteria are that "the program is based on theory that is
accepted by experts in the field" and "the theory provides a logical
explanation of why the program should work." Rudi Krause says D.A.R.E.
fails these tests and numerous others.

Krause has an intensity - described by some critics as obsession - that can
be offputting when he gets on the subject of D.A.R.E. But his research has
highlighted a number of valid criticisms of D.A.R.E.

One of the most intriguing tidbits he has unearthed comes from a highly
public source, former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates' autobiography, "Chief: My Life
in the LAPD." In it (p. 309), Gates acknowledges that in 1983 there
was no budget authority for D.A.R.E. So, as Gates writes: "Fearing I would
again be rebuffed, I wanted to gather as much support for D.A.R.E. as I
could before making it a major budget issue. The Police Commission approved
the concept but could not authorize funds. As a result, I began to divert,
without any payers' money to the program - up to $5 million a year.

Gates' tone is almost self-congratulatory, viewing the move as an example of
his decisiveness. Krause sees it as "self-incrimination" for "embezzlement."

WHAT IS D.A.R.E.?

The core of D.A.R.E. is the fifth grade featuring uniformed police officers
in the classroom for a one-hour session each week. The curriculum is
promulgated from the Los Angeles D.A.R.E. headquarters. It includes lessons
on the effects of mind-altering drugs and the consequences of using them, on
peer resistance techniques and building self esteem, managing stress,
reducing violence, media influences, positive role models and gangs.

The D.A.R.E. curriculum was adapted from a program begun in 1981 in the Los
Angeles schools, Project SMART (Self-Management and Resistance Training)
developed by veteran researcher Bill Hansen and others at the University of
Southern California. When then-Los Angeles Police Chief Gates began D.A.R.E.
in 1983, he asked researcher Ruth Rich to develop a curriculum. She was
working in the Project SMART program and adapted the curriculum into what
became D.A.R.E.

Trouble is, according to an article by Jeff Elliott in the March 1995 issue
of Reason magazine, the SMART researchers had been testing two different
approaches - an "affective" approach centered on self-esteem
and a "resistance training" approach - and was still in an experimental and
testing phase. The D.A.R.E. curriculum combined both approaches.

But Project SMART researchers discovered the affective program not only
didn't work, there was evidence that, as Elliott wrote, "it had the dreaded
'boomerang' effect - it actually encouraged some children to fiddle with
drugs." SMART researchers offered to apply their findings to D.A.R.E. but
the D.A.R.E. people had no interest in
changes. Indeed, according to Elliott, the only changes in D.A.R.E. came in
1994 when lessons on gang violence and tobacco were added.

"Perhaps unconditionally," wrote Elliott, "the new emphasis on violence and
cigarettes also matches new criteria for funding. Violence is a key word in
the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, and similar wording can
be found in the federal crime bill. States such as California and
Massachusetts also have hefty set-asides for anti-tobacco programs, funded
by cigarette taxes."

Officer Frank Caruso of Garden Grove, who has taught the D.A.R.E. curriculum
for three-and-a-half years, believes the statistics and nit-picking pale in
comparison to the results he sees in the classroom.

"The D.A.R.E. program builds relationships between young people and the
police that you can't measure with a test," he told me. "It gives kids tools
for making intelligent choices, developing sound values, being respectful of
one another and building self-esteem. The kids I teach are always sorry when
the program is over, and I still have kids in high school come up to me to
tell me what a positive difference D.A.R.E. made in their lives.

"D.A.R.E. can't counteract every negative influence these kids will
encounter in just 17 weeks," he explains, "but I know it's making a
difference and a positive difference."

By most accounts, even those of some critics, this aspect of D.A.R.E. - the
interaction between young people and the D.A.R.E. officers - is genuinely
and almost universally positive. Most of the D.A.R.E. officers who go into
classrooms are skillful and personable, promoting a comfortable familiarity
with children, teachers and school
administrators and presenting a positive image of law enforcement. D.A.R.E.
students have credited D.A.R.E. training with helping them to thwart an
improper approach by a stranger. The D.A.R.E. program provides revenue and
an opportunity to do community relations work for police departments.

But the key purpose of the program is keeping young people from getting
involved with drugs, and the scientific research suggests that D.A.R.E.
- -trained students are no more or less likely to do so than those not exposed
to D.A.R.E.

D.A.R.E. IS BIG MONEY

D.A.R.E. was started in 1983 in Los Angeles. By Autumn 1985 the program was
firmly entrenched locally. The first evaluation of D.A.R.E., generally
positive, was in 1986, by consultant William DeJong, for the National
Institute of Justice. Chief Gates used it to win a $140,000 grant from the
Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Assistance to take D.A.R.E. nationwide.

By 1992 D.A.R.E. programs were getting $10 million a year from federal
entitlements. The D.A.R.E. America nonprofit corporation was founded in 1987
to mange growth.

In an October 1993 article USA Today reporter Dennis Cauchon, after lengthy
discussions with D.A.R.E. executive director Glenn Levant, estimated that
police, taxpayers, local government and businesses gave some $7oo million a
year to support D.A.R.E. Tax returns filed by D.A.R.E. show estimates of
only $230 million a year, most of that in volunteer time, with the D.A.R.E.
organization itself spending some $5,5 million in 1994. However, there is no
centralized accounting of all the funds spent on D.A.R.E. at the local level.

RETHINKING DRUG EDUCATION

That's a lot of money, and the evidence suggests that aside from creating a
positive image for law enforcement among school children - which arguably
could be achieved with more traditional community-relations programs - it's
not working. Rudi Krause may or may not be right about how harmful the
D.A.R.E. program is, but there's little reason to think much harm would be
done if it were dropped.

To be fair to D.A.R.E., few school based drug education programs are
especially effective. In the book, "An Ounce of Prevention," RAND Corp.
researchers studied two programs they considered superior, Project ALERT and
Life Skills. They focused on delaying the age at which young people first
try marijuana, which their research suggests is a key indicator in serious
cocaine use.

They found that top-notch programs delayed marijuana initiation by 5 percent
to 17 percent, and therefore (after several chapters full of charts, graphs
and estimates) "a model school-based prevention program will reduce future
cocaine consumption by a net present value of about 3.8 grams per
participating adolescent."

That puts school-based programs near the middle, in terms of
cost-effectiveness, of various anti-drug strategies. Treatment is the most
cost-effective approach. School programs are more cost-effective than source
country control and interdiction, but less cost-effective than domestic
enforcement, federal enforcement or longer sentences.

Bottom line? A model school-based education program implemented nationwide
and run almost flawlessly "would take 10 years to reduce the number of
past-year cocaine users by 2.5 percent, 20 years to reduce it by 5 percent,
and 40 years to achieve a 7.5 percent reduction, all relative to a
no-prevention baseline."

This should not be all that surprising. It's a commonplace to complain that
we can put a man on the moon but we can't solve - well, name it. But social
"problems" begin with individual human beings, each one of whom is
infinitely more complex than a space shuttle and still much less well
understood. Each human being has a unique set of genes and a particular set
of experiences. How much of his or her life decision can be influenced
strongly by a brief classroom interlude? A decision to try marijuana at a
certain age might seem like a spur-of-the-moment impulse but can also be
viewed as enormously complex, affected by experiences and proclivities, few
of which can be grasped or understood by an outside observer.

To expect 17 weeks of having a police officer offer even a perfect
curriculum to be a major deciding factor is undoubtedly unrealistic.

In addition, as long as certain drugs are illegal, school-based education
programs will have difficulty dealing with those drugs objectively. Some
programs may be content with warning against illegal drugs strictly because
using them can get you arrested. Courses that deal with the inherent danger
of such drugs - especially as compared to the legal drugs tobacco and
alcohol - will run into problems.

Based on the short-term and long-term health effects of the substance,
marijuana is almost certainly less dangerous than tobacco, for example, but
should you be saying that in a drug-prevention course? If you don't say it,
however, will the program lose credibility when kids discover it on their own?

It will always be difficult to design courses that describe drug
consequences objectively so long as the legal status of some drugs is
different from other drugs. But don't expect many designers of such courses
to argue for legalization.

But it might not be a bad idea to reconsider not only school-based
drug-prevention programs but a host of school-based programs designed to
alter the attitudes and behavior of children in a politically correct
direction. It's hard enough to teach the basics. Trying to mold children
into good little socially responsible citizens who have been indoctrinated
so they will never do anything "society" deems unwise might be more than can
be expected of an educational system.