DARE TO BE BETTER

A new version of the anti-drug program is being tested.

Let's hope it's improved. Teenagers need the help.

RIGHT OR wrong, critics who have complained over the years that Drug Abuse
Resistance Education does no good seem to have done the program some good.
And the nation's youth can only benefit.

DARE has dared to take a hard look at itself. A result is a revamped model
that researchers say appears to help children better resist the temptation
to abuse drugs.

The DARE curriculum, developed for fifth-graders by police officers in Los
Angeles in the 1980s, is by no means the only program to target young people
in the nation's long-running, and frustratingly inconclusive, "war on
drugs."

It is, however, the most well-publicized and popular anti-drug program, used
in 80 percent of school districts nationwide, found in every state of the
union and in 49 other countries. Despite such widespread acceptance, studies
of DARE's effectiveness show conflicting results.

Some researchers say it, and other anti-drug programs, might teach young
children the dangers of abusing drugs. But the programs do nothing to prompt
youngsters to resist those dangers when they get older, and actually face
the choice.

Other researchers point to a recent leveling off of illegal drug use and
credit drug education programs such as DARE, at least in part.

Either way, DARE managers seem determined to increase the program's
effectiveness. Schools in six cities chosen as test sites will expand the
curriculum to the seventh and ninth grades, and will use teachers, as well
as police officers, to teach lessons involving more lifelike situations.

Adolescents need to know more than the risks involved in abusing drugs. They
need to know how to say no when their peers offer them the chance - perhaps
for the very purpose of taking a risk.

A few more years, and they will understand the stakes better, and the wisdom
of resisting. Till then, they need guidance to make it, unscathed, to full
maturity.