NEW CURRICULUM D.A.R.E.S CRITICS TO SAY 'YES' TO FUNDING

ATLANTA -- Georgia officials should take a hard look at the most popular
anti-drug abuse program in the schools to see if it's worth funding,
according to a recent state audit.

But advocates for the D.A.R.E. program say curriculum changes due to be in
place by next fall will have the widely popular initiative on the right track.

The report, released by the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts,
cites research showing that D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) has
no long-term effects on drug-abuse rates among young people. It points to
an audit of Arizona's D.A.R.E. program last year that found ''virtually no
impact on students' drug-use behaviors.''

But the planned curriculum changes will allow more school districts to
offer the course to middle-school students, who are at the age where kids
tend to start experimenting with drugs, said Garry Moore of the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation, the special agent who oversees the state's
D.A.R.E. program.

''It's going to change the way we do business,'' he said. ''I think it's
going to be rejuvenated.''

The lack of D.A.R.E. courses at the middle- and high-school levels is a
focus of the state audit's findings. Of the nearly 88,000 Georgia students
in public and private schools who took a D.A.R.E. course during the
2000-2001 term, more than 76,000 were elementary students.

D.A.R.E. was founded in 1983 by the Los Angeles Police Department to teach
fifth-graders about the dangers of drugs. The program caught on quickly,
and it's now a fixture in about 80 percent of the nation's school districts.

While D.A.R.E. is essentially a local program, the GBI trains the police
officers who teach the courses in Georgia. D.A.R.E. also received nearly
$500,000 in state funding during fiscal year 2001. But Moore said state
grant money, an important funding source that was in plentiful supply when
the program first caught on in Georgia during the early 1990s, has begun to
dry up.

He said the curriculum changes will allow school districts that have been
hard-pressed to provide D.A.R.E. beyond the elementary level to spread out
their funding. The new system calls for reducing the number of weekly
lessons in the elementary course from 17 to 10.

''With 10 weeks, we can do the program in the elementary and middle schools
with the same amount of effort,'' said Moore. Ralph Lochridge, spokesman
for D.A.R.E. America, the Los Angeles-based non-profit group that runs the
program, said the shorter course will force instructors to focus on its
core anti-drug message, rather than straying into side issues like gang
violence.

''The researchers have been saying D.A.R.E. has been asked to do too
much,'' he said. ''This is narrower in focus.'' The new curriculum, which
was tested recently among 15,500 middle-school students in six major
cities, also will use teachers instead of relying just on police officers,
and include lessons with more real-life situations.

A study released Tuesday by the University of Akron found that the students
involved in the test were more likely to reject drugs. The state audit also
criticized the Department of Human Resources' drug-abuse prevention efforts
as inconsistent from one part of Georgia to another.

Brenda Rowe, prevention program chief for the DHR's Division of Mental
Health, Developmental Disabilities and Addictive Diseases, said those
shortcomings are being addressed by a recent overhaul that transferred
planning responsibilities from regional boards to the state level.

D.A.R.E. in Georgia

300 active officers, as of March 2002 120 public school systems, 58 private
schools 87,882 students during 2000-2001 school year: Elementary -- 76,126
Middle School -- 10,699 High School -- 1,057

- -- Source: Georgia Bureau of Investigation