DARE TO CHANGE

The American Public Supports A Tough Stance On Drugs, Even Though It
Doesn't Work. The Only Way Things Can Change Is If The Media Start
Confronting Some Unpalatable Facts, Says Maia Szalavitz.

TO OUTSIDERS, it will seem shockingly narrow-minded. At a conference on
drug abuse last year, sponsored by the US government's Center for Substance
Abuse Prevention, a speaker was shouted down and told to "Shut the fuck
up". Her crime? Simply saying that government anti-drugs funds should go
only to programmes based on methods that have been shown to work, and for
suggesting that a popular scheme called Girl Talk wasn't one of them. Only
the conservative media thought the incident worth mentioning: the woman who
had been silenced was a noted conservative.

But for anyone following the debate over US drugs policy, intolerance of
dissent will be depressingly familiar. Lack of respect for research is an
endemic problem in this area. It is not helped by the media, whose
uncritical support for anything that claims to be "anti-drugs" only
encourages the proliferation of ineffective and expensive programmes.

Girl Talk promotes the idea that helping girls achieve more in
traditionally "masculine" areas makes them less likely to use drugs. Yet
since boys are at least twice as likely to use drugs as girls, this notion
is questionable, and there isn't a shred of independent research to back it up.

The DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) programme is an even bigger
scandal, if only because it operates on such a large scale. DARE is
conducted by police officers in 80 per cent of American schools. Children
are taught that all drugs - including alcohol and tobacco - are equally
harmful and given tips on the best ways to "just say no". In the past Glenn
Levant, the programme's founder, regularly demonised researchers for
faulting his programme, calling their work "voodoo science" and accusing
them of "kicking Santa Claus" and "setting out to find ways to attack our
programmes".

But a year ago he changed his tune. The government, embarrassed over the
absence of any sound data supporting DARE, threatened to withdraw funding.
No published, peer-reviewed study has found that DARE reduces drug use
among adolescents, while several have indicated increased use among
participants. Yet it took more than 18 years and a dozen solid negative
studies of thousands of children before the point hit home.

More remarkable still, at the same time that Levant was reflecting on the
ineffectiveness of his programme, he announced that he'd received a $13.7
million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to revamp it. DARE is
so deeply entrenched in so many schools, that the foundation decided it
would be better not to start from scratch.

The media's ambivalent attitude towards DARE surely influenced its
decision. Just weeks before Levant's announcement, a reporter from the Long
Island-based tabloid Newsday, one of the largest local newspapers in the
US, summed up the DARE debate in the following way: "Different camps cite
conflicting studies, some indicating that DARE is effective and some that
it isn't." If Newsday had done a five-second Web search to check both
sides' citations, it would have found that the real data supports only one
position.

Most newspapers treat research as just another partisan voice. One Iowa
paper wrote in September: "Most of the studies that have questioned DARE's
effectiveness show that the message does not last - that those students who
receive DARE as their only lesson on drug abuse have forgotten the message
by the time they hit high school. That doesn't mean it isn't effective as a
starting point." Sounds like addict logic to me: if it's not working, try more.

It gets worse. Consider DARE's basic premise - that police officers should
teach children about drugs. Teenagers mistrust authority figures on this
subject, and are more likely to heed peers or adults whom they know -
something social scientists have understood for years. DARE is now taught
to 10 and 11-year-olds, who compete eagerly for DARE shirts and praise from
its officers. But the revamped DARE will run in high school, where
teenagers' interests in DARE paraphernalia is more likely to be ironic.
It's sure to raise a laugh at raves. Yet a major foundation has agreed to
fund yet more research - and still no one asks why.

There's a deeper problem here. The government's position that drug use is
always harmful is scientifically dubious. Unfortunately, a 1994 law lays
down that federally funded prevention programmes must have a strict "no
use" message. This effectively blocks any significant change of tactics
even outside DARE. Political change will be needed before anti-drugs
efforts can begin to improve. To stimulate this change there needs to be
better research and reporting. The quality British press, for example, has
been far more sceptical of anti-drugs crusaders; and Britain has better
drugs policies to show for it. The British government has been funding
needle-exchange programmes for drug addicts since 1988, as a way to limit
the spread of HIV. The US government has still not managed to do anything
similar, despite scientific support from every major concerned body.

What sounds good isn't necessarily what works. Two major reviews of
existing data on drugs prevention programmes - one American, one British -
have found that there is no known programme that actually cuts illegal drug
use. After billions of dollars and over three decades, not one has had a
significant and lasting effect. So why not test alternatives?

It may be time to try programmes aimed at reducing the harm drugs do,
rather than their use. It may be possible to cut addiction and overdose
rates. But we'll never know unless American journalists hold the largest
funder of drugs research in the world - the US government - accountable. So
here's an appeal to American reporters: start to confront your biases and
those of your audience, and make the effort to understand the science. Dare
to follow the data, not the crowd.

Maia Szalavitz is co-author of "Recovery Options: The Complete Guide"
(Wiley, 2000) and writes regularly on science and drugs policy.