DARE-ING TO GO IT ALONE

Funding axed, 125 communities still offer drug abuse-prevention program
With a gun strapped to his hip and a radio mike perched on his shoulder,
the veteran cop in dark blue wanted some answers. The sixth-graders had
plenty. They raised their hands and shouted: "Alcohol!" "Tobacco!"
"Marijuana!" Officer Stephen Plympton nodded, apparently satisfied that the
16 kids in his DARE class at Norfolk's Freeman-Centennial School had
absorbed the names of the "gateway drugs."

The DARE antidrug program is still alive in many communities west of
Boston, despite questions about its effectiveness and the elimination of
its state funding. It has survived thanks to local funding and private
donations raised by police officers who continue to believe it's
worthwhile. "If you can affect one kid's life, I think that's worth its
weight in gold," said Plympton, who has been the DARE officer in Norfolk
for the 14 years of its program's existence. "I can honestly say that's
happened." The program is also continuing in Plainville, Lincoln,
Watertown, and at least 17 other Globe West communities.

"It's been something the community's behind and the schools still want us
to do," said Lincoln Police Chief Kevin Mooney, a former DARE officer. The
Drug Abuse Resistance Education program began in Los Angeles in 1983. It
was designed by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles
Unified School District to give fifth- and sixth-grade students the skills
they needed to resist peer pressure to try drugs and alcohol. It quickly
spread nationally and expanded to include upper grade levels. But in 2002,
a General Accounting Office survey of academic studies concluded that the
program was ineffective in preventing drug abuse. Six long-term evaluations
of the DARE elementary school curriculum found "no significant differences
in illicit drug use between students who received DARE in the fifth or
sixth grade and students who did not," the GAO reported. State funding for
the program was slashed in 2002 by acting governor Jane Swift from $4.3
million to $200,000. The funding was eliminated in fiscal 2004 and 2005.
And last year, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey said she wouldn't recommend
funding the program until its methods were reevaluated. Still, about 125 of
the state's 351 communities continue to provide the program, said Domenic
DiNatale, executive director of DARE Massachusetts, founded in 2002 as a
not-for-profit fund-raising and training organization to help keep DARE
alive. In 2002, he said, approximately 328 towns offered the program. "A
lot of the towns were relying on the grants they were getting from the
state appropriation," DiNatale said. "When you look at that money paying
for the workbooks, or the kids' graduation T-shirts, or certificates, or
pencils and pens . . . now all of a sudden that money's gone and it has to
come out of your municipal budget. You have to say, from the chief's point
of view, what do I want to do?"

DARE officers generally visit classrooms once a week and give talks.
Students fill out workbooks, ask questions, and role-play with partners. In
Norfolk, a town of more than 10,000, the state cuts "really ripped the core
of the program," said Plympton.

He has been soliciting donations through the mail to keep the program
going, and so far, it's worked.

"I just felt it was the best way to find out what kind of support that I
had. And I have been very happy with the support I have received from the
residents," he said.

But the funding cuts have meant that his lessons are now restricted to the
sixth grade, as Norfolk, along with Wrentham and Plainville, decided not to
fund the program in the regional middle school and high school. "If we had
that [state] funding, I could definitely see those programs returning," he
said.

In Plainville, Patrolman Jim Rockett has been visiting classrooms for 12
years. He said his program is now a "no-frills" affair. "This year, I
couldn't even afford workbooks," said Rockett, who still tries to spring
for the DARE T-shirts that students have sported since the program's early
days. He holds fund-raisers, including a yearly basketball game between
officers and sixth-graders, to raise money.

When the town of around 7,500 was forced to rely on donations, however,
lessons immediately disappeared in the higher grades. The program was
generally restricted to sixth-grade students, which Rockett believes will
make it less effective. For Lincoln, a town of about 8,000, eliminating the
program when state funding was cut was also out of the question. Instead,
the Police Department juggled its internal budget and sought donations to
continue the program, which was begun there in 1990.

"We feel it's important, and we try to adjust our schedules and rearrange
and cover shifts," Chief Mooney said.

Though he acknowledged the questions about the program's effectiveness, he
said he believes there are clear benefits, including the creation of
long-running ties between children and police, with some seeking officers'
help as they grow older.

Watertown police also wanted to keep those relationships alive. Its
program, which focuses on fifth- and seventh-graders in the town of 34,000,
now also relies on the town budget and private donations.

"If you reach out to even one kid, I think it's worth it," said Lieutenant
Michael Lawn. "It forms good relationships with the Police Department, too.
The DARE officer gets to know all the kids, and that's an asset for both
the Police Department and the schools."

Five of the six studies reviewed by the GAO in 2002 looked at students'
attitudes about illicit drug use and their ability to resist peer pressure.
None of them found any significant difference in the long term between
students who had gone through the DARE program and those who hadn't. While
two of the studies showed students had stronger negative attitudes toward
drug use one year after going through the program, the effects diminished
over time. DARE was bypassed this week when a private foundation awarded $1
million in grants to several Globe West school districts to fight alcohol
and drug abuse. Katie Lawler, a junior at King Philip Regional High School
in Wrentham, said she has never tried drugs and credits the DARE program in
the Plainville schools for helping her to say no.

"There's so many pressures out there to get you to do all different things,
and you're caught in so many situations," said Lawler. "[The DARE program]
shows you . . . the consequences that you'll face. You just realize what
you're doing." Lawler said it was the activities and the field trips to
places like the local prisons that solidified the lessons for her.

But Katie Ford, spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Public Safety, said
the state currently has no plans to fund the programs again. Instead, she
said, officials are looking at other types of substance abuse education.
Ford said her office is working to put together a "Teen Team" program in
cooperation with alcohol awareness groups, including Students Against
Destructive Decisions and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, in which teens
would educate their peers about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

The "You Drink & Drive. You Lose" public relations and enforcement campaign
also works to educate drivers across the state at key times, including
holiday weekends and around high school prom time , Ford said. "We think
it's great that these municipalities that do participate in DARE clearly
feel that they are benefiting from it. And we would never tell them to
stop," Ford said. "But as far as the statewide campaigns, we are directing
our resources in a different direction."

DiNatale said the DARE program in the state has been strengthened since the
cuts, with a new curriculum that focuses more on role-playing. Three years
of a new five-year study into the program's effectiveness, by the
University of Akron, have already been completed, and DiNatale said the
results so far show that DARE is an asset to the communities that offer it.
"Although we've lost programs over the years," he said, "we feel very
strongly that the study is going to show that DARE is the way to go and
that the towns that have dropped it will find some ways to bring it back
in." Sonia Fitopoulos, a sixth-grader at the Freeman-Centennial School in
Norfolk, said she felt she had learned a lot from her DARE class and she
could learn even more if the classes continued into higher grades. "The
things you learn here will help you when you're older," she said. "I think
it would help you say no."