D.A.R.E DOES NOT KEEP KIDS OFF DRUGS

Drugs have been the topic of thousands of discussions, arguments and
conflicts for years. One of the ways schools, in partnership with the
police, have chosen to deal with this reality is implementing the Drug
Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., program in fifth- and sixth-grade
classrooms. The D.A.R.E. program is an unsuccessful and expensive program
that should be taken out of the school curriculum.

The D.A.R.E. program simply does not work. Even though D.A.R.E. is taught
in 80 percent of the school districts nationwide, the National Institute on
Drug Abuse revealed that 53 percent of high school seniors have
experimented with some illegal drug in their lifetime.

It is not surprising that D.A.R.E. is unsuccessful, since the curriculum is
so sporadically taught. The program consists of one 45- to 60-minute lesson
once per week for 17 weeks. After that, the officers go home, the children
move on, and once they arrive at junior high and high school, they forget
or disregard anything they learned in those 17 weeks.

D.A.R.E.'s abstinence-only slogan, "Just Say No," causes a conflict. By
teaching children that the drug policy is strictly no-tolerance, curiosity
is roused, which inevitably leads to experimentation. Talking about
students' drug use is taboo with teachers and officers, so children
experiment without any knowledge about safety. A 1998 University of
Illinois survey of 1,798 elementary school students found that no
differences exist with regards to illicit drug use among D.A.R.E graduates
and non-graduates six years after completing the program.

The cost of the D.A.R.E. program is outrageous. It costs approximately $7.5
million per year to buy shirts, caps, pens, bumper stickers and other
materials, as well as the cost for training and police overtime salaries.
Part of that money comes from personal contributions, but the other part
comes from taxpayers. That money is taken away from more successful drug
prevention tactics, such as putting more police officers on the streets.

Many proponents of D.A.R.E. use statements from the children in the program
to prove the program works. Although these 11- to 12-year-old kids may
enjoy D.A.R.E. at the time it is taught and feel that they have learned a
lot from it, the officers do not follow them throughout their education,
and students' feelings change.

An alternative to the D.A.R.E. program is "Just Say Know," an approach
similar to the way sex education is taught in many schools. "Just Say Know"
teaches that if a person decides to use drugs, even against strong advice
not to, he or she needs to be knowledgeable about his or her choice.

D.A.R.E.'s abstinence-only approach to drug education is not working. Drugs
are still a reality in many schools. It is evident that D.A.R.E. needs to
be abandoned and a more successful program implemented.