ORANGE CO. SCHOOLS TO STICK WITH DARE

Despite state and local budget cuts prompted by recent studies showing the
program's ineffectiveness, Orange County Schools plans to continue using
the Drug Awareness Resistance Education program in its schools.

Donna Williams, health education coordinator for the school system, said,
"I don't foresee us discontinuing the program."

She added that abandoning DARE seemed particularly unlikely because the
program has undergone many changes during the past few years. One of the
biggest of these changes was expanding the program to the seventh grade. It
previously only was taught to fifth-graders.

Williams said that expanding the program to the seventh grade helps "to
ensure that students continue to hear the message that drugs are wrong."

Williams also said there was a possibility of adding a DARE program for
high schools, which would require more training for the deputies from the
Orange County Sheriff's Department who teach the program.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools previously used the DARE program, but
Chris Blue of the Chapel Hill Police Department, which ran DARE, said the
program was discontinued about five years ago.

Susan Spalt, CHCCS health coordinator, said DARE was discontinued because
national research showed that it was ineffective.

Spalt said CHCCS now is using a program called LifeSkills Training, which
is taught on a middle school level by health teachers with help from
resource officers.

According to its Web site, the LifeSkills Training program is one of nine
drug abuse and violence prevention programs designated as "exemplary" by
the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

Susan T. Ennet, professor of health behavior and education at the UNC
School of Public Health, conducted a research study in 2002 that concluded
that evidence-based programs such as LifeSkills Training are likely to be
more effective in preventing substance use by children than programs such
as DARE, which is not evidence based.

Denise Hall, a substance abuse prevention researcher at the Pacific
Institute for Research and Evaluation, was at UNC when the study was
conducted and agreed that DARE was "not a very good use of taxpayer money."

Sgt. Regina Richardson of the sheriff's department said that DARE, which
has been used in Orange County Schools for the last 15 years, is effective
because it presents factual information about drugs and alcohol, life
skills and decision-making skills to the students.

"These surveys are based on paper and pencil, what's put down, and not
actually being with the kids," she said.

Funding for DARE comes from Orange County Schools' alcohol and drug defense
coordinator and private donations, not from taxpayers' money.