CANADIANS START DARE, U.S. DROPPING DARE

Re: 'Dare to say no' on RCMP page, February 21:

While Canadian schools are just beginning to implement the Drug Abuse
Resistance Education (DARE) program, schools in the US are dropping it.

Good intentions are no substitute for effective anti-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. Minimizing drug use requires strategies based on
proven effectiveness, not 'feel good' programs that please parents,
educators and police.

The most commonly abused drug and the one most associated with violent
behaviour 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, DC