DARE To Get Rid Of Ineffective Drug Prevention Programs

T-shirt logo worn by my pot dealer at our 8th grade graduation from the DARE program.

American culture is pervaded by a deep denial of human nature; we are a society chock-full of repressed assholes spawned from the roots of Calvinist theology. Advocates of abstinence-only approaches to sex and drug education programs embody an extreme form of this denial. As Max recently pointed out, abstinence-only sex education programs have consistently been proven abysmal failures in their effectiveness at reducing rates of sexual behavior among adolescents. Unfortunately, this same “just say no” philosophy is also being espoused by the morons responsible for trying to keep kids off drugs.

Not surprisingly, the popular DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program has been found time and again to be completely ineffective in reducing substance abuse rates among kids and teens; and in some cases, evidence suggests that it may actually increase these rates. Tax money will likely continue to fund this awful program for some time to come, however, largely because parents and educators really only care about cultivating their illusions of security. For parents, having cops tell their kids about the dangers of drugs is considered preferable to dealing with the issue themselves, and the notion that cops may be more qualified to do so seems to be a common misperception. It’s too bad these DARE police officers actually are not any more qualified than parents to teach kids about drugs; and as such, they should be making their overtime pay waving cars through busy intersections rather than spending time in a nice comfy school where they are made to feel important.

Here are some of the well-established facts about how awful this program is (found at drugpolicy.org):

· In the 20 years since DARE began, studies have consistently shown that DARE has no significant effect on students’ use of drugs.

· The General Accounting Office of the US Government found “no significant differences in illicit drug use between students who received DARE . . . and students who did not.”

· Estimated costs of DARE annually: $1 to 1.3 billion.

· In 2001, the U.S. Surgeon General placed DARE under the category of “Ineffective Programs.”

· The National Academy of Sciences has called DARE ineffective.

· I am a graduate of the DARE program.

And Last but not certainly not least:

· DARE America’s vice-president, Nancy J. Kaufman, has admitted that abstinence-only education is empty rhetoric. “Realistically, people understand that for a great number of adolescents, they might try something at least once.”

So it seems that the new DARE VP actually has some common sense. Of course, that will still do nothing to stop her from trying to continue turning profits by implementing this useless program in schools all across the country. She will likely continue succeeding in this endeavor even in the face of the evidence against DARE and for alternative educational programs. Fortunately, there are quite a few drug education programs that are actually supported by evidence and that have already been adopted by some schools. One such program that has been found to specifically reduce substance abuse rates among the college-age population is the Social Norms approach to drug and alcohol education. It is based on some well-established findings from social psychology that focus primarily on the effect of peer misperceptions of normative behavior. Applied to drug education, this program educates kids about the facts and statistics of normative peer-group behavior with regard to alcohol and drug abuse. For instance, most kids perceive that substance abuse and alcohol consumption rates among their peers are much larger than they are in reality, which only increases the power of peer-pressure to conform to these misperceived social norms. Simply educating kids about the facts has been found to significantly reduce such peer-pressure.

The Social Norms approach of basically just providing kids with statistical "facts" about normative peer behavior actually works at reducing substance abuse, as opposed to DARE’s useless yet comforting approach of selling misinformation and scare tactics. I personally favor a harm-reduction approach to drug education, which would provide kids with information on how to use drugs as safely as possible in addition to informing them of the many dangers associated with drug abuse. Such programs neither explicitly promote nor demonize drug use but are still viewed by many as having a pro-drug slant. Although a harm-reduction approach seems the most appropriate to me, as far as I know, such programs have yet to be found any more effective than the DARE approach at actually reducing substance abuse rates. So, what am I to do as a purported rational person when faced with the available evidence? Simple: I have to accept the findings in spite of my own biases and get behind a program like Social Norms. Supporters of DARE should be forced to do the same.

Historically, it seems that the human drive to seek altered-states of consciousness, i.e., through drugs, is almost as natural as the biological drive to fuck. This is reality, and abstinence-only education supporters need to accept it. As Max said in a recent post: “Plainly speaking, many Americans need to get off their crippled moral high horse and acknowledge the biological and cultural realities of the situation, which unfortunately for them do not comport with their backwards worldview.” Let us all DARE to accept the sometimes uncomfortable aspects of our realities and work to get rid of all abstinence-only oriented programs in favor of evidenced-based approaches to sex and substance abuse education.

~Wolf