SEX, DRUGS AND DOCTRINE

Politics trumped science once again today as the President officially
proclaimed April 14, 2005 "National D.A.R.E. Day." Heaping praises on the
Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, Bush said, "Across America, law
enforcement officers, volunteers, parents and teachers are helping to send
the right message to our nation's youth about illegal drugs and violence
through the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) Program."

Yet despite 22 years of drug-free pledges, T-shirts, bumper stickers and
plenty of abstinence-only rhetoric, the program does not seem to be getting
the "right message" across to the D.A.R.E. generation, many of whom are
saying "maybe," "sometimes," or even "yes" to alcohol and other drugs.

As in years past, the 2004 Monitoring the Future
(http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/ survey of drug and alcohol use by high
school students revealed that three-quarters admitted to using alcohol
prior to graduation, and half had tried illegal drugs. Dismissal of "just
say no" is so widespread that even the Bush twins were caught imbibing
before they were of legal drinking age.

Perhaps teens are cynical about the simplistic "drugs are bad, don't use
them" messages they have received since early childhood. Or maybe they
don't find police officers, however well-meaning, a credible source of
information. Whatever the reasons, the "feel-good" D.A.R.E. program has
proven to be little more than that for everyone involved, except students
themselves.

Evaluations over the past decade have consistently found, as the General
Accounting Office noted after assessing the research, that, "D.A.R.E had no
statistically significant long-term effect on preventing youth illicit drug
use." To add to the ever-growing chorus of critics, the Surgeon General,
the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education and the
American Federation of Teachers have deemed D.A.R.E. ineffective. And
although D.A.R.E. has tried to re-invent itself of late, preliminary
evaluations are faring no better than those of the original, which is the
program still currently used in a majority of school districts in America.

By officially praising D.A.R.E., Bush not only demonstrates a fundamental
disregard for science, but also contradicts his own education policy. The
No Child Left Behind Act recommends only programs approved by the Center
for Substance Abuse Prevention. D.A.R.E. is glaringly absent from that
prized list of "evidence-based" drug education programs.

While the Bush administration continues to tout an ineffective program, a
growing number of big cities are refusing to go along. Most notably, Los
Angeles, birthplace of the program, gave D.A.R.E. the ax last year. And
after receiving a scathing report from the Independent Budget Office, New
York City abandoned D.A.R.E. last year, citing ineffectiveness as well as a
savings of $2.5 million to the city.

Sacrificing sound programs in favor of doctrine, a palpable disservice to
teens, is also apparent with the parallel issue of sexuality education. The
House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Rep.
Henry Waxman, has been looking at federally funded, abstinence-only sex
education programs, which now dominate the terrain, and found that such
programs deliver distorted and inaccurate information about contraception
and sexually transmitted diseases.

Just this month, authors of a joint Yale/Columbia University research study
reported on the impact of teenage virginity pledges pushed by the "True
Love Waits" movement. In the prestigious Journal of Adolescent Health,
sociologists Hannah Bruckner and Peter Bearman revealed that the majority
of pledgers ultimately had sex before marriage. Pledgers were less likely
to use condoms than their non-pledging counterparts, and those who remained
virgins were "more likely to substitute oral and/or anal sex for vaginal sex."

The ultimate item of bad news: there was no difference in rates of sexually
transmitted disease in pledgers and non-pledgers, prompting the authors to
write, "The all-or-nothing approach advocated by many abstinence-only
programs may create additional barriers to knowledge and protection for
adolescents."

We hear lots of rhetoric these days about family values and safety. As the
mother of four, I share other parents' concerns about the worrisome issues
of sex and drugs. Abstinence, of course, would be ideal for teenagers. But
in the end, we have no choice but to accept the reality that young people
make their own decisions, and they are not always consistent with our
preferences. When policymakers advocate rigid, abstinence-only drug and sex
education programs of questionable value, to the exclusion of
safety-oriented approaches that dare to provide an honest, comprehensive
fallback strategy, they put our young people in real jeopardy. If sex and
drug prevention programs prohibit the discussion of practical information
about how to take precautions if one is not abstinent, they are neither
education nor protection.