DON'T YOU D.A.R.E.

The extent of dare's ability to muzzle critical studies
can be seen in the treatment of the most definitive test of
the dare program ever conducted. In 1991, the National
Institute of Justice (NIJ)the research wing of the
Justice Departmenthired the prestigious Research Triangle
Institute (RTI) to analyze the studies on dare and
determine the bottom line. Initially, dare supported the
"metaanalysis." In a 1992 letter, it urged state groups to
work with RTI, saying it "will give us ammunition to
respond to critics who charge that dare has not proven its
effectiveness."

"Everything was going along just fine," explains a
researcher who worked on the RTI analysis and who asked
that his name not be used so he wouldn't get " any more
nasty, screeching phone calls" in the middle of the night.
"That is, until we started finding dare just simply didn't
work. Then all hell broke loose."

In 1993, RTI presented its preliminary results at a San
Diego drug education conference. According to Sociological
Focus, a dare supporter immediately responded by urging RTI
to call off the research, saying: "If dare fails, it will
be making a statement about all prevention programs." After
the conference, dare launched an allout war to sink the
study. An internal memo from the July 5, 1993, meeting of
dare's advisory board offers evidence that Levant tried to
squelch the study. The memo contains the minutes of
Levant's speech. Levant criticized an advance copy of the
RTI study. The minutes summarize Levant: "The results of
this project are potentially damaging to dare. dare America
has spent $41,000 in trying to prevent widespread
distribution of what is considered to be faulty research."
The minutes also noted that "dare America has instituted
legal action," aimed at squelching the RTI study. "The
action has had some positive results," the minutes
reported. "It has resulted in prevention of a second
presentation by RTI. Legal action is intended to prevent
further public comment until completion of academic
review." Lochridge did not return a phone message asking
for comment on the memo, and asking whether government
funds had been used to stop the government from
distributing a governmentfunded study questioning the
efficacy of a governmentfunded program.

In the past, dare had been unable to effectively refute
its critics on scientific grounds, and its claims rang
correspondingly weak. "They must not know how to measure
things," maintained an Indiana dare official about the
Kokomo research at a local community agency. "If they could
just see the kids' faces, they'd know how much good it's
doing." Herbert Kleber, a Columbia University professor who
heads dare's scientific advisory board, says the RTI study
was flawed. "It used the old dare curriculum, which had
already been substantially revised," Kleber says. "No, the
new curriculum has never been examined."

So this time Levant turned to grassroots pressure.
According to one Justice Department official, Levant
arranged for dare supporters to flood the Justice
Department with phone calls. Nationwide, many teachers,
principals, dare officers and parents believe in the
program with almost religious devotion. In local debates,
they have always been more than willing to make phone
calls, write letters and hold forums to support dare. This
time, the callers stayed "on message," the official says,
speaking almost as if from a script. "They'd call and tell
us if we published the study, dare would be sunk and
millions of kids would get hooked," says the official.
"Whenever we'd say the research looked mathematically good,
they'd say, there's more at stake here than good
statistics. Can you live with that?'"

In September 1994, RTI finished the lengthy report. It
concluded that, while dare was loved by teachers and
participants, it had no effect on drug use. It also went
one step further, a step that dare feared most of all. "
What got RTI in the most hot water is that they said other
programs work better," says Moran, the Mount Holyoke
sociologist. In other words, RTI found that dare is not
merely a failure in itself, but crowds out money for
programs that actually keep kids off drugs. RTI published a
lengthy bibliography of some of the other programs. Kleber
says the alternatives RTI looked at, which he calls
"boutique programs," were only examined in highly
controlled environments.

Levant upped the ante. Congressmen and mayors began
calling the National Institute of Justice. The politicians
stressed two messages: the curriculum had changed since the
study, making it irrelevant; and the public did not want to
hear criticism of an antidrug program widely regarded as
successful. The Justice Department official says the "phone
rang off the hook." One month later, for the first time in
memory, the Justice Department refused to publish a study
it had funded and successfully peerreviewed. " We're not
trying to hide the study," Ann Voit, an NIJ spokeswoman,
told USA Today. "We just do not agree with one of the major
findings." A puzzling statement, since NIJ hired RTI in the
first place because it trusted them to evaluate dare
impartially. Still more puzzling is that even as late as
six months after the San Diego conference, NIJ sent RTI
memos praising the study. One note from Laurie Bright,
NIJ's program manager, said the "methodology appears to be
sound and dare representatives did not offer any specific
flaws ... it presented findings in a very fair and
impartial light." Eventually, Jeremy Travis, who heads the
NIJ, stepped in. He publicly reiterated that Justice had
not caved under dare's pressure, explaining that NIJ's
independent reviewers unanimously recommended against
publishing the report. Not so, according to one reviewer.
William DeJong, a Harvard lecturer, told USA Today: "They
must be misremembering what I said." Two of the independent
reviewers who examined the report in March 1994 recommended
that more analysis be done. But both urged the publication
and wide dissemination of the executive summary of the
report, and one praised the crucial section that analyzed
dare's efficacy as "well done." NIJ still has not approved
the study, but will sell it upon request.

The same day Justice refused the study, The American
Journal of Public Healtha highly respected academic
journalaccepted it. It had conducted its own peer review
and found the paper to be worthy. The Justice Department
official says this infuriated Levant and that dare tried to
prevent the journal from publishing the study. While no one
at Public Health would comment on Levant and dare, two
editors at the journal said that it stands by editor Sabine
Beisler's comment of October 1994: "dare has tried to
interfere with the publication of this. They tried to
intimidate us." When NIJ learned the journal was going to
publish the study, it issued its own twopage summary. The
summary oddly heralded dare's popularity, but virtually
ignored the thrust and bulk of the study, which showed dare
doesn't curtail drug use.

Today, the researchers who worked on parts of the RTI
study remain thoroughly spooked by their experience. Two
researchers at RTI, four at universities and two now in the
private sector refused to talk more than briefly about the
study. All but one said they were scared of losing their
jobs. Three told me that their superiors had been contacted
by politicians. " A state representative called my boss and
asked if my research was really in the best interest of the
community," said one state university professor. " Thank
God my boss said yes.' I don't know if even tenure would
stand up to that."

Dare's hardball approach is as well known among journalists
who have attempted stories on the organization as it is among
academic researchers. James, a television news producer who
does not want his last name used for this story, says that ever
since he was Dared he doesn't have any doubts about retaliation.

Several months ago, James,
who works for a small Missouri station, produced and aired
a short editorial criticizing dare. In more than a decade
of local news, it is the only item he has ever regretted
running. After that show aired, so many kids called James
so often at home to read him lessons from the dare workbook
that he was forced to unlist his telephone number. "You bet
I was Dared," James says. "The calls came and on and on. I
had to hear about soandso is offered a joint, but she
says no.' I couldn't take it." Two callers told James that
their dare officer encouraged them to call his house at
strange hours. After that, James's house was attacked with
graffiti messages like "crack user inside" so many times,
he moved to an apartment building. The local police, who
run the local dare program, spent no time looking for the
vandals, James says. After a math teacher asked his son how
"the pothead dad" was doing, he transferred his kid to a
boarding school. And, when the owner of a local diner asked
him to stop coming to lunch, since other customers were
leaving when he walked in, his wife took to calling him
"Smalltown Salman," after Satanic Verses authorinhiding
Salman Rushdie. James says he phoned Levant and asked him
to "please call them off," but Levant never returned the
message. "This may sound as if I'm being extreme, but I'm
not. I went to Vietnam and that was less stressful," James
says with a shaking voice. "There, the people I love
weren't always being attacked. And this time, I know I'm on
the right side." In the past year, NBC's newsmagazine
"Dateline" has become the most prominent news organization
to be Dared. Starting in September 1995, " Dateline"
producers began initial research on a hardhitting story
about how dare doesn't work. They interviewed researchers
who had concluded that dare was a failure and students who
couldn't remember the lessons. A "Dateline" camera crew
also flew to Indianapolis, where an affluent, mostly
Republican suburb was debating whether to keep dare. For
the past year, the school district had monitored a small
pilot program. More than 100 parents showed up to the
meeting and, according to those who were there, the
majority vocally opposed dare. According to a longtime NBC
News employee, the show was scheduled to run on April 9,
1996the day before National dare Day. The following
account of what then transpired has been corroborated by
two additional NBC sources; essential details of it have
also been confirmed by a dare source and a Justice
Department source.

Last March, Levant heard about the planned "Dateline"
show. According to the NBC News employeewho does not work
on "Dateline" but has read a series of letters between
Levant and NBC officialsLevant wrote an "attack letter"
to Jack Welch. Welch is the chief executive officer of
General Electric, NBC's parent company. The letter called
the segment a "journalistic fraud." Levant accused
"Dateline" of "staging" the Indiana meeting. Still under
the shadow of an infamous episode in which "Dateline" was
accused of rigging trucks to explode, the NBC employee says
Levant's accusations sent "Dateline" 's staff into a
"whirlwind of activity." But Levant's accusation was a
"flat out lieno ifs, no buts about it, a lie as low as
it goes," says Betsy Paul, then the Parent Teacher
Organization president of the Indiana school district. "I
don't know how to say this strongly enough. I will tell you
on any witness stand with God as my judge.... We had
scheduled the meeting for at least a week before Dateline'
said they were coming out here." Paul says David McCormick,
NBC's senior producer for broadcast standards, called her.
McCormick asked her if she had brought in "ringers" to
stack the meeting against dare. "And that was the biggest
bunch of bologna I've ever heard," Paul says. "dare just
doesn't like that parents here figured out they didn't
work." As further proof, Paul points out that this year
dare was eliminated in her school district and replaced
with a locally developed program. " Levant is a big liar
because if we stacked that meeting, if it didn't accurately
reflect how this community thinks, then why did the school
board eliminate dare this year?" she says. "I'll say it
again, he lied, and once more he lied."

Levant's letter to Welch contained other untruths,
claims the NBC News employee. In the letter, Levant alleges
"Dateline" producers would only interview him on the day
his wife was receiving a bone marrow treatment for
leukemia. Not true, according to the NBC News employee:
"Dateline" offered Levant "several" date options. Levant
also alleged "Dateline" staffers were interrogating kids in
dark rooms like "old war movies." In truth, "Dateline"
cameramen had turned off the overhead lights when they
interviewed dare participants because they were using their
own lighting, which is standard practice. While the NBC
employee says McCormick defended "Dateline" in a response
to Levant, the story was put on hold. "dare scared NBC's
upper brass, " the NBC employee says. "The story was, and
is, solid. The people on it are some of the best in the
business, but we did not want to look like we were going
after a program that keeps kids off drugs. You can imagine
that's a very unpopular position with G.E. So it was put on
hold." David Corvo, the NBC vice president that clears
"Dateline" episodes before they air, says, " There is no
controversy about the program at NBC." He says all delays
occurred because he felt the segment needed more reporting.
"No way," the NBC News employee says. "That piece was solid
in every way. Sure, you can always get another interview,
and they did, but even before that it was better than much
of what we air."

Then, in a September 1996 issue of TV Guide, NBC placed
the following announcement: " Dateline NBC': A Len Cannon
report on the dare program in schools. Its effects are
statistically insignificant,' says segment producer Debbie
Schooley. Research overwhelmingly shows no longterm
effect on drug use.' The report visits schools in suburban
Indianapolis."

According to the NBC employee, the TV Guide announcement
killed the episode again. Dozens of dare supporters,
including Levant, called NBC. According to the employee,
this time he made veiled threats of suing "Dateline."
Despite the listing, the show didn't air. Corvo maintains
that NBC "did not kill" the story and says if any lawsuit
threats were made, they were not taken seriously. He
maintains that NBC sent TV Guide the listing several weeks
in advance, but when the date arrived, the piece still
wasn't ready.

Next, the biggest gun in the drug wars tried to sink
the segment once and for all. In midSeptember, the White
House's drug czar General Barry McCaffrey stepped in.
"Dateline" had already interviewed McCaffrey for the
segment. During the interview, McCaffrey ridiculed the
research against dare, but a Justice staffer says he did a
"very poor" job refuting the mounds of evidence. Corvo
won't comment on McCaffrey's interview, beyond saying the
drug czar disputed the evidence against dare.

On September 20, 1996, Donald Maple, a spokesperson for
McCaffrey's office, wrote to "Dateline"'s executive
producer. The letter asked "Dateline" not to use the taped
interview with McCaffrey. Maple wrote that he feared the
interview would serve " Dateline''s purpose of painting
dare in a bad light." The NBC employee says pulling the
McCaffrey interview might have dealt a " death blow" to the
show. NBC's McCormick responded to Maple that the show's
producer had written McCaffrey a letter before the
interview telling him the purpose of the interview was to
discuss research on dare's effectiveness. While the network
did not promise to cut McCaffrey's interview, the NBC
employee explains, "at some point this story is much more
trouble than it's worth." Maple says writing this kind of
letter to a news organization is " uncommon," and he had
never done it for McCaffrey before. But he says " Dateline"
treated McCaffrey unfairly.

The show was rescheduled one more time, for Tuesday,
February 4. That time slotright after the president's
State of the Union addressis commonly considered to be a
"death slot." Clinton's speeches are renowned for running
long, killing whatever television segment is planned to run
next. And, that night, the segment did not run. As
expected, Clinton's speech ran longer than scheduled and
"Dateline" ran a show focusing on the O.J. Simpson verdict.
" This system has worked. This show has not been killed.
Whoever says that is out of the loop," Corvo says, adding
that he has now cleared it to air. As of February 10,
though, the segment had not been rescheduled. Corvo says it
will be rescheduled when the executive producer of
"Dateline"returns from vacation.

And researchers and reporters are not the only ones
getting Dared. Some parents who question the program also
say they've been strongarmed. In the San Juan Islands
northwest of Seattle is a small town called Friday Harbor.
There, dozens of parents have joined together in a group
called San Juan Parents Against dare. According to Andrew
Seltser, the group's founder, nearly all of the members
want drug education in the schools; they just don't believe
the dare program works. In August, Seltser's group
collected more than 100 signatures on a petition asking the
local school board to review the effectiveness of dare. The
debate about dare overtook the small community, and became
a matter of intense passion, with local dare supporters
raging against the parents who were challenging the
program. In September, the local school board announced it
would review concerns about dare.

Then an odd thing happened. On October 7, 1996, the "CBS
Evening News" aired a short segment that presented
information critical of dare. No one in Friday Harbor saw
that segment, though. Thirty seconds into the story, Friday
Harbor's screens went black. Randy Lindsey, the station
manager for the local cable station, says when he watched a
videotape of that night's news "it looks like someone
pulled the plug." Lindsey can't explain the blackout.
Friday Harbor, he says, often has problems receiving
television signals due to sun spots. But sun spot
interference, he says, normally distorts the screen
differently. Seltser's group says they believe the program
was jammed by dare supporters since it came in the heat of
the debate. And some Friday Harbor dare supporters aren't
denying it. One prominent local dare supporter says it's
"not important" whether or not the show was jammed. "Look,
I'm not going to answer the question as to whether or not I
know who jammed it. Hell, it might have been me," he says,
asking that his name not be used. "What I am going to tell
you is that TV program may have stopped dare in Friday
Harbor, which means more kids here would be on drugs."
Dare's public response to studies critical of the program
has been to dismiss the studies as irrelevant. dare says
the studies are based on an old curriculum that may not
have worked, but that the program now uses a redesigned
curriculum that does work. The problem with the old
curriculum, dare officials say, was that dare classes were
not interactive enough; under the new curriculum, the
classes are much more so. But this seems debatable, judging
from a recent dare class conducted by Detective Rick Myers
at Barcroft Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia.
Myers, a big man who looks very much like a cop, visits
Barcroft's fifthgraders every Thursday to lead them in the
dare way. One week's lesson was about resisting peer
pressure. Myers's lesson lasted about fortyfive minutes.
All but six minutes were spent on a lecture by Myers. To be
sure, Myers used interactive role play during those six
minutes, but researchers question the value of such role
playing as set out by the dare curriculum.

For the first scene, Myers chose two kids: a
brownhaired boy who was so nervous that he wobbled when he
stood, and a tall girl who was so self confident that she
bowed when she got to the front of the room. Myers
whispered the script to the two children and told them to
face each other.

"There is a party on Saturday night at some person's
house," the girl said matteroffactly. The boy said
nothing.

"The people there, they will be drinking things that
have now louder and more slowly alcohol."

The boy looked at the ground.

"I said, The people will be drinking very loudly and
very slowly alco hol.'"

"No," peeped the boy.

Kindly, but firmly, Myers lectured the boy. "Posture.
Eye contact. Posture. Eye contact," Myers told him. "You
need to be confident. You're doing the right thing."

Take two. The girl said her first line. The boy said:
"Oh." Myers shouted: " Posture. Eye contact." The girl said
her second line. The boy stood straighter, looked the girl
briefly in the eye, and said very quickly: "No thank you, I
don't take alcohol. I prefer juice and milk." Myers led
everyone in a round of applause. At one of the back tables,
a thuggishlooking kid sat regarding this little scene with
frank scorn. "He's supposed to say that? That won't work.
He'd get the shit beat out of him."

For another scene, Myers chose a small girl with wide
eyes and scraggly brown hair. She seemed a little nervous,
but excited to have been chosen. Myers whispered the
instructions into her ear. They faced off, standing about
ten feet from each other. Myers walked up to the girl.
"Hey, do you want to buy a joint?" he said. She replied,
almost inaudibly, "No." Myers put his face close to hers.
"Come on, wanna buy it?"

"No, thank you," she whispered.

Now, waving his finger in her face, Myers shouted: "Why
not? Come on, buy it!"

The little girl, backed against the windows, said,
again, "No." Myers led the class in a round of applause.

Drug researchers interviewed about Myers's scenes are
dismissive. "That role play is absurd. If the kids learn
anything at all from it, they learn not to buy drugs from
police officers," one researcher says. "Making it more
interactive means making it more like real life. This is
not useful. Fun, maybe. Useful? Nope." And Myers's class is
typical. When I asked him if other dare instructors did it
differently, he was adamant in response. "No. The great
thing about this program is that everyone in the country is
trained the same way," Myers told me. "We are told to go
exactly by the book. There is no room for modifying the
program. No way. It's the same everywhere."

The claim that dare's curriculum is changing and
maturing seems to be more a matter of tactics than anything
else. A longtime California instructor who recently
retired, and who told me that the curriculum has not in
fact changed much at all, conceded that saying the
curriculum was in constant flux did have an obvious
strategic benefit. Experts agree. Wysong and Wright wrote
in Sociological Focus that if dare is portrayed as a
constantly evolving program it can't ever be studied and
therefore can't ever fail. "Thus dare is protected from
criticism and remains forever young,'" they wrote. "In
fact, in the view of dare stakeholders, this is as it
should be, because the program cannot be allowed to fail:
the stakes are simply too high."

In fact, the most controversial part of the program the
dare box has remained unchanged despite years of criticism
about this systematic attempt to encourage children to rat
out the grownups around them, including their own parents.

After the first class, the students, following dare
instructions, fashion a shoe box into a colorful mailbox,
often decorated with dare stickers. Each week from then on,
for the entire seventeen weeks, students are encouraged to
write anonymous notes asking any question they want. They
are also allowed to accuse people of using or selling drugs
or committing sexual abuse. These accusatory notes may also
be anonymous. At the end of every dare class, the officer
reads the questions out loud. The officer does not read the
accusatory notes to the class, but those notes are referred
to the appropriate school and police investigative units
for action. As James Bovard pointed out, Darrin Davis is
not an isolated case. dare students have fingered their
parents in Maryland, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. In 1991, a 10
year-old told a Colorado 911 operator, "I'm a dare kid,"
and urged the police to arrest his parents for marijuana
possession. After his parents were arrested, the cop
assigned to his school publicly praised him.

Parents and scientists in dozens of states have attacked
the dare box, saying that it reminds them of Stalinists
rewarding kids for ratting on their parents. Lochridge,
dare's spokesman, dismisses their fears, saying it's mostly
"urban myths." "Officers, as part of their training," he
adds, "are taught not to elicit information about the
students' personal lives." Lochridge says students are not
encouraged to make accusations. But, according to one
University of Illinois study, an accusation is made in 59
percent of all dare classes. And while that number may be
high, three Washington, D.C., area dare cops interviewed
said a dare box note accused someone of using or selling
drugs in at least onethird of their classes. All three
cops said they "didn't discourage" their students from
making accusations. Lochridge maintains the cops are just
doing their job. "I don't know of any state which doesn't
have laws requiring us to investigate any accusations of
sexual abuse or drugs," he says.

In the end, dare has an answer that trumps all. Even if
there is some truth to charges that dare doesn't work, what
this means is that we need ... more dare. "Well, if you
teach people fractions or a foreign language, it's going to
erode unless you reinforce it," Lochridge explains. "So the
answer is more dare. Kids need to get it more." And
doubtless they will, whether it does them any good or not.