DARE WE ADMIT IT? DRUG WAR IS A BUST WITH OUR CHILDREN.

What would you say if told that each year the federal government spends
more than $650 million of our money on an education program that has been
proven ineffective and may actually be hurting our children?

You might wonder why the Republicans haven't attacked it as a taxpayer
rip-off. Or why the Democrats, who consider education policy their domain,
haven't created a task force to find something better. Or why parents and
teachers haven't demanded some answers.

Over the last five years, study after peer-reviewed study has described how
D.A.R.E. and other anti-drug programs fail to reach the teenagers most at
risk of drug abuse. Present in 70 percent of public schools nation-wide,
D.A.R.E. relies on uniformed police officers and scare tactics to drum the
lust-say-no message into our kids.

This is a national scandal. Yet in competing radio addresses about teen
drug use in December, neither the president nor the Republicans addressed
the failure of drug education programs.

Studies conducted for the General Accounting Office, the Justice Department
and the California Department of Education received some coverage by the
media. But the truth about D.A.R.E. has been virtually ignored or dismissed
by our political leaders.

It's little wonder why. D.A.R.E. is an effective marketing machine. By
combining grassroots RR -- including T-shirts, bumper stickers and rallies
- -- with aggressive political lobbying of local, state and federal
governments, D.A.R.E has become its own special interest group.
Unfortunately, D.A.R.E, and other 'rust say no" programs rely on hype over
science when it comes to educating our kids.

Dr. Joel Brown of Berkeley-based Educational Research Consultants conducted
the most extensive evaluations of drug education programs to date. His
research, published in leading national scientific journals, showed that
drug education programs are not only ineffective but may actually be
hurting your kids.

Brown's conclusions -- eloquently articulated for him by the teens he
interviewed -- were so disturbing that in 1995 the California Department of
Education, which funded Brown's study, buried the results. (The findings
only became-public in March 1997, when they were published in the
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis journal.)

Research shows that kids who are taught that pot is as bad as heroin are
more likely to experiment with heroin if they tried marijuana and
experienced few consequences. Those kids suspect that if they were lied to
about pot, then they were probably lied to about hard drugs as well.

As a result, many teens rebel against the programs that are intended to
help them. The core of the problem is that D.A.R.E. and other "just say no"
boasters refuse to recognize that teen-agers experiment with drugs.
Government surveys show half of high school students try an illegal drug --
80 percent if you include alcohol -- before graduation. What does the "just
say no" message offer these kids? How do we reach these young people on the
issue of drug abuse?

Unfortunately, federal law makes it harder, not easier, to reach kids who
experiment with drugs. Federal funding is allowed to flow only to "just say
no" curricula -- programs that don't allow us to answer honestly the
questions our kids ask.

Kids who experiment with drugs and those with substance abuse problems
alike are suspended or expelled from school, stigmatized and ostracized. In
short, we poorly educate all children and abandon the kids most in need of
our help.

We can turn around drug education by abandoning the "just say no" approach
and funding pilot programs that seek to reduce the harms associated with
drugs, including addiction. We should focus on the capabilities, not
inabilities, of our children. Most importantly we should understand that
drug experimentation is different from both misuse and drug abuse, and seek
ways to help those who have a problem with substance abuse.

As in 12 step programs, the first step toward recovery is the recognition
that we have a problem.