D.A.R.E MAKES LIARS OUT OF STUDENTS

When I was in grade school, my fifth grade class would be whisked
away once a week into the small chapel outside of the school's church
where we would sit on the stiff wooden pews for an hour or so while
listening to a police officer speak about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

For those who have been through it, you already know what I'm talking
about. But for those who haven't, I'm referring to the Drug Abuse
Resistance Education program, best known as DARE.

Thousands of students across Hawai'i and the United States have to go
through the DARE program every year. 75 percent of school districts
across the country have a DARE program set up, according to the
official DARE website. 98 percent of Hawai'i's public schools as well
as some private schools have a DARE program, according to HPD's DARE Web site.

In Hawai'i the DARE program is taught by uniformed HPD officers, who
try to increase students' abilities to "just say no" when they become
pressured by their peers to try drugs or alcohol.

The climax of Hawai'i's DARE program is a field trip to Aloha
Stadium. I don't remember much about my DARE "graduation," but at a
DARE ceremony earlier this month, police specialists dropped down
from Aloha Stadium's roof, and the drug dogs are always popular with students.

At the end of the program, students take a pledge to live drug- and
alcohol-free lives. I don't know if this is the exact pledge that I
took, but it sounds about right and it's what I found when I Googled
"DARE pledge":

"I know who I am and I know that I want to stay healthy and happy. I
can stand up for myself and stick to my decision to live a drug-free
life. I can ask for support from my family, friends, teachers and
even the police. I pledge to say 'No' to offers to use drugs and
alcohol. I can help others say 'No' to drugs and alcohol."

Do the police officers and those who run the DARE program honestly
believe that encouraging the students to take a pledge to avoid drugs
and alcohol will have much of an effect when they are offered a beer
at a party, say, five years later? Has any teenager ever turned down
a beer by saying, "No, I made a pledge to not drink alcohol when I
was in the fifth grade"?

Do the people who run the DARE program really expect any student to
be able to uphold the standards that pledge sets forth?

Unless the police officers teaching these classes really never have
tried alcohol or drugs before, there's something wrong to me about
standing in front of a stadium full of students and listening to them
promise to do just that.

On the flip side, DARE supporters could say that no one forces the
students to take the pledge. But it would take a hard-minded fifth
grader to refuse to take a pledge along with ten thousand of his or her peers.

And I'm not sure how many students can honestly say that they are
better off for having gone through the DARE program. The title of a
study conducted in 1999 pretty much says it all - "Project DARE: No
Effects At All After Ten Year Follow Up."

On the DARE website, HPD rationalizes targeting fifth graders because
they are likely to not have tried drugs or alcohol or experienced
peer pressure and are "therefore more receptive to prevention education."

But wouldn't it be more constructive to focus the DARE program on
intermediate and high school students who are actually facing these
temptations? By high school everything I learned in the DARE program
was long forgotten.

And the DARE program or the pledge I took certainly didn't deter me
from accepting a cold beer from my brother a few years later.

I lied even without realizing it.