A CLOSEUP LOOK AT DARE

Allana Franklin, 11, a fifthgrader at Carteret's Columbus School, uses a
State Police fiberoptic camera to examine the contents of her lunch bag
during the DARE rally yesterday at the Rutgers Athletic Center In
Piscataway.

Rally leader defends antidrug program

By Matthew Reilly
STAR EDGER STAFF

The founding president of DARE New Jersey yesterday criticized a report
that has raised questions about the effectiveness of the nation's largest
antidrug organization. Nicholas DeMauro, who is also a New Milford
police detective, contended the study was not based on new research,
focuses on a DARE curriculum that has been discarded and was conducted by
a consultant who favors the legalization of drugs.

"Dr. Joel Brown is a proponent of legalization of drugs," DeMauro said.
"He is recommending that we teach children how to use drugs efficiently.
He looks at DARE as an opponent."

The study conducted by Brown, a Californiabased consultant, is part of
a federal Department of Justice report to be released later this month. It
concludes that DARE and similar programs largely fail to deter elementary
schoolchildren from using drugs.

(photo)

Katherine Murphy, 11, of the St. Matthias Catholic School in Somerset with
her dad, Rutgers Police Chief Anthony Murphy, during the DARE rally that
attracted about 4,500 schoolchildren.

DeMauro's defense of DARE came yesterday as organization officials, a
few hundred police officers involved in the Drug Abuse Resistance
Education program and about 4,500 schoolchildren filled the Rutgers
Athletic Center in Piscataway for an antidrug and antiviolence rally.

With rock music blaring in the background, DeMauro said the DARE program
is effective, but must be part of a team effort to persuade children not
to get involved with drugs.

"We need to have a comprehensive approach," DeMauro said. "Drug
education in schools isn't the only answer. But look around here, look at
all these kids. Imagine if we didn't have DARE, where would we be."

Students at the Rutgers Athletic Center yesterday got to check out
police and rescue helicopters and the New Jersey State Police bomb squad
before filing into the gym for a program of awards, speeches, music and
dancing.

DeMauro said the report by Brown, director of Educational Research
Consultants, was labeled as flawed by the California Department of
Education, which commissioned the study.

"He (Brown) talked to kids in grades 7 through 12 and the majority of
DARE programs focus on kids in fifth and sixth grades," DeMauro said. "He
said kids don't want to just listen to people telling them to just say no,
they want life experiences. That's what DARE is all about, firsthand
experience."

Despina Kontomanolis, a 9yearold pupil from the David E. Owens Middle
School in New Milford, gave the program high marks, saying its message has
sunk in.

"Don't do drugs, and believe in yourself," Kontomanolis said of the
lessons she had learned through DARE.

Attorney General Peter Verniero who appeared on behalf of the Whitman
administration, said he believed the DARE program is working but should
not be expected to solve all the problems associated with drug abuse.

"I think the DARE program is a good one," Verniero said. "But by its own
design, it's limited to certain grade levels. One of the challenges we
face is to support DARE and supplement it."

Reached by telephone in California, Brown said the California Department
of Education has dismissed his study as flawed but has not offered any
statements about what is wrong with it.

"They approved all of the research before we did any of it," Brown said.
"Our articles were submitted for scientific publication and have been
accepted and published in the most prestigious scientific journals in the
United States after a stringent peer review process.

"There is no logical basis for that claim (that the study is flawed),"
he said. "There is only one reason, and that is that these results show
the damage being done to kids by these programs and they are politically
inexpedient."

Brown, who denied he advocates legalizing drugs said the voices of youth
must be heeded. He said no scientific studies show that DARE programs are
effective.

"Right now, politics are taking over and the children are the losers,"
Brown said. "I am not a legalizer. I don't think I'm a radical. In no way
do I advocate programs that have kids using drugs. But we have to listen
to the kids."

PHOTOS BY MATT RAINEY