DARE DOESN'T KEEP OUR KIDS OFF DRUGS

To the Editor of The Day:

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program's 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 need to 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. They keep 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 in drug education. 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
number one drug problem.

Robert Sharpe,
Washington, D.C.

The writer is program officer for the Drug Policy Alliance.