IT MAY BE RIGHT TIME FOR DARE'S DEMISE

A Greensboro Police Department proposal to cut funding for the Drug
Abuse Resistance Education program isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Good intentions are no substitute for effective drug education. Every
independent, methodologically sound evaluation of DARE has found the
program to be either ineffective or counterproductive. The scare
tactics used do more harm than good. Students who realize they are
being lied to about marijuana often make the mistake of assuming that
harder drugs are relatively harmless as well. This is a recipe for
disaster. Drug education programs must be reality-based or they may
backfire when kids are inevitably exposed to drug use among their
peers.

The importance of parental involvement in reducing adolescent drug
use cannot be overstated. School-based extracurricular activities
have also been shown to reduce drug use by keeping kids busy during
the hours they're most prone to getting into trouble. In order for
drug education to be effective, it has to be credible. The most
popular recreational drug and the one most often associated with
violent behavior is often overlooked. That drug is alcohol, and it
takes far more lives every year than all illegal drugs combined.
Alcohol may be legal, but it's still the No. 1 drug problem.

Robert Sharpe, M.P.A., Washington

The writer is program officer, Drug Policy Alliance,
http://www.drugpolicy.org/