Drug Abuse Resistance Education

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[edit] Overview

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program was created in 1983 by Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates. According to the DARE website, 36 million children around the world — 26 million in the U.S. — are part of the program. The program is implemented in 80% of the nation's school districts, and 54 countries around the world.

The gist of the D.A.R.E. program is that uniformed police officers come into mostly fifth-grade classrooms for one hour a week for seventeen weeks, "educating" students to "resist drug abuse." At the beginning of the program, students are required to sign a pledge that they will "keep their body free from drugs." At the end of the seventeen weeks, a "culmination ceremony" is held, D.A.R.E. songs are sung and students are presented with D.A.R.E. T-shirts, a certificate, a pin, and a wallet-sized plastic card identifying them as D.A.R.E. graduates.

The D.A.R.E. program has been found to be ineffective at deterring drug abuse, and may actually increase the prevalence of drug use among suburban children.

[edit] Lack of Efficacy

Despite its huge popularity, and hundreds of millions in tax revenue and private contributions, no evidence exists that D.A.R.E. keeps kids off drugs. A large, developing body of studies documenting this conclusion is referenced in the accompanying list of references and other resources. The bottom line is that at best, in the words of the Justice Department-sponsored study by the Research Triangle Institute, D.A.R.E. has a "limited to esentially nonexistent effect on drug use."

The U.S. General Accounting Office reported, "There is little evidence so far that [D.A.R.E. and other "resistance training" programs] have reduced the use of drugs by adolescents" (U.S. GAO/GGD-93-82, "Confronting the Drug Problem," page 25).

D.A.R.E.'s official response to this growing body of research is disdain for science. "Scientists tell you that bumblebees can't fly, but we know better," declared D.A.R.E. Executive Director Glenn Levant upon release of the government-sponsored report that D.A.R.E. doesn't work (USA Today, October 11, 1994). The local D.A.R.E. officers we talked to also claim that the anecdotal evidence is convincing that D.A.R.E. is working extremely well, citing the warm reception they have received by schools and parents. "Besides," they often add, "even if we are reaching only one kid, it's worth all the effort."

(It is not clear why their standard of success is so low. We would hardly declare a math curriculum successful if only one kid learned to add.)

In an editorial October 15, 1993, The Chapel Hill (North Carolina) Herald observed, "If D.A.R.E. isn't doing the job it's supposed to, we owe it to fifth- and sixth-graders to find out why."

[edit] The DARE Generation

Students for Sensible Drug Policy often refers to itself as the "DARE generation." In other words, we are the young people who grew up listening to the government's dishonest propaganda and have determined that the War on Drugs can no longer be waged in our names.

In 2004, Micah Daigle infiltrated the DARE Training Conference and distributed a letter to every DARE officer, denouncing the failed War on Drugs.