Wednesday, Aug 20, 2008
America's school-based drug prevention program gives in to critics' pressure.
Feb 16, 2001 | For nearly two decades, the majority of schoolchildren in the United States have been required to memorize three little words: "Just say no." They have been taught that dabbling with drugs even once can harm you, that peer pressure to use drugs is a lurking menace to be dodged and rejected at all costs. They have written thousands of essays decrying drug use, and worn T-shirts, hats, ribbons and badges to ward off the encroaching threat of narcotics.
But the days of "Just say no" may just be over. Leaders of the nation's largest drug prevention program, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, announced on Thursday that they were changing DARE's approach, admitting that the vastly expensive program appears to be ineffective. Indeed, research has indicated that DARE may actually have contributed to greater drug use by high school students.
DARE administrators announced that the program will adopt a new strategy for school-based drug prevention, and begin testing it in 80 high schools and 176 middle schools in the fall. Around 50,000 students will be involved.
"The new curriculum gives students the skills to make positive, quality-of-life decisions," reads DARE's press release. "It also discusses the conditions leading up to violent behavior, how to identify potentially violent situations, and some basic ways to avoid or defuse such situations."
Critics of DARE say the time is long overdue to dismantle the program and make sure, before exposing children to it, that it is not only effective but, most important, not harmful. They also worry that these changes, like much-heralded changes in the past, will not be significant enough to completely revamp the failing program.
Joan McCord, co-chairwoman of the National Academy of Sciences panel that issued a stinging report on DARE this week, is one of the people who is concerned about the program hurting the children who participate.
"It's a mistake to assume that you can simply design a program and know in advance whether it will be harmful," says McCord. "I think of those who created thalidomide. They had good intentions, and look what happened. The harm comes from the failure of programs and programs must be evaluated for safety."
She and others assert that politics is what has kept the much-criticized program around for so many years, despite a mountain of evidence contesting its efficacy.
Don Lynam, who issued a report two years ago questioning the effectiveness of DARE, feels vindicated after Thursday's announcement. But he fears that the new DARE program won't depart enough from its old curriculum.
Over a decade, Lynam and his colleagues at the University of Kentucky compared children who had participated in DARE with those who had not. They followed more than 1,000 students from sixth grade, when they initially heard DARE's message, to age 20. Salon spoke with Lynam about the nature of drug abuse, the failure of the DARE program and why so many parents, politicians and police officers blindly believed the program was working.
What was the major finding of your study?
In the end, we found that DARE did not affect individuals' drug use behavior or attitude about drugs. It also didn't affect things that DARE purports to influence, like peer pressure resistance or self-esteem.
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