D.A.R.E.'s muddled message to kids
The Boston Globe, Wednesday, September 21, 1994
by Richard M. Evans
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Last week's reports that D.A.R.E. cannot account for $5 million in
smoking prevention money comes as a surprise; more surprising
is what D.A.R.E. is teaching our children.
D.A.R.E. is an acronym for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. It was
started by Darryl Gates and the Los Angeles Police Department
11 years ago, and has since expanded to thousands of schools in
50 states and some foreign countries, gaining enthusiastic support
from teachers, law enforcement agencies and students. In this
program, uniformed police officers spend an hour per week for
17 weeks with schoolchildren, mostly fifth and sixth graders,
purportedly educating them to resist drug abuse and often developing
close personal attachments in the process.
As the parent of a fifth grader, I recently served on a committee
in our local school to look at D.A.R.E. and other drug prevention
curricula We found that D.A.R.E. is good on some things, such as teaching
children how to thwart an improper approach from a stranger. However,
we were left with serious concerns about D.A.R.E.. Here are some of
them:
Despite D.A.R.E.'s popularity, there is no hard evidence that it actually
works. The best thing the (Massachusetts) Governor's Alliance
Against Drugs can say after surveying all available evaluations
is, "The conclusions are mixed as to the effectiveness of
D.A.R.E. in decreasing drug use among students who have participated."
A report of the Research Triangle Institute, commissioned by the
US Department of Justice, says the program has a "limited
to essentially nonexistent effect on drug use."
D.A.R.E. relies on the old "values clarification" approach
(trendy in the '70s, but now generally discredited) wherein children
are not told what is right or wrong, or permissible or impermissible,
but rather they are "helped to prize and act upon their own
freely chosen values," in the words of a 1975 educational
psychology textbook. Thus D.A.R.E. does not tell children that they
must not use drugs. Instead, D.A.R.E. tells them that they have the
"right to say no," implying that they have the "right
to say yes."
A Portland, Maine, D.A.R.E. officer quoted in he September 1992 issue
of Governing, put it more simply: "I say to kids, 'You can
smoke dope if you like, as long as you've considered the consequences.'
" Conversely, D.A.R.E. teaches children that they must obey traffic
laws. Imagine telling student drivers that they have the "right"
to stop for a school bus. It would be confusing, misleading and
hazardous. Yet that is what D.A.R.E. tells students about obeying
drug laws.
D.A.R.E. trafficks in ambiguities. Despite the term drug abuse in
its name, for example, D.A.R.E. doesn't tell children what drug abuse
is, or how it can be identified. The closest it comes is to define
abuse as the "wrong use of something; such as, misuse of
drugs." No standard - legal, moral, physical or otherwise
- is offered to establish what is "wrong" and whose
determination that is. Nor does D.A.R.E. say what "misuse"
is.
D.A.R.E.'s most serious deficiency is that the emphasis is not on
drugs at all, but on "building self-esteem" and "controlling
stress." The former is achieved in part by reciting a litany
of "rights" said to have been conferred on fifth graders,
like the "right to be happy."
If my son is unhappy about turning off the TV and going to bed,
I don't want somebody telling him his rights have been violated.
"Stress" is said by D.A.R.E. to be caused by a variety of
normal experiences, including taking a trip, meeting someone new,
or doing your chores!
Finally, D.A.R.E. is not respectful toward the authority of parents.
Although "resistance skills" are emphasized, it is not
made clear against whom such skills are to be used. In the D.A.R.E.
video, called "The Land of Choices and Decisions," the
only trustworthy adults depicted are the D.A.R.E. officer and the
teacher. The other adults are drug dealers and a drunken father.
Looking at D.A.R.E. was an eye-opener for me. It's a peculiar mix
of education, therapy and law enforcement, and it deserves the
scrutiny of parents.
Richard M. Evans is a lawyer in Northampton.
Daily Hampshire Gazette, Friday, December 30, 1994
Guest Column, by Richard M. Evans
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The recent tragic heroin-related deaths in the Valley should compel
us to a harsh examination of what went wrong. The Gazette responsibly
asks that question in an editorial Dec. 23, but skims the surface,
I think to place the blame on the "glamorization" of
heroin.
Heroin use is certainly not "glamorized" in our culture,
by any stretch of the imagination. We do not see the rich and
famous praising its alleged virtues in magazine ads and television
commercials. The word reeks of contempt. One wonders how many
readers of the Gazette have ever heard a kind thing said about
it.
The fact is, massive public information campaigns about the risks
and dangers of illegal drugs have been bombarding young eyes and
ears at an historically high level for years.
Anti-drug messages are propounded by drug educators, law enforcement
authorities and public health officials, among others, and most
prominently by the media/advertising alliance called the Partnership
for a Drug Free America. Its campaign to "unsell illegal
drugs" represents the second largest advertising campaign
in history, and one of the most creative. The message is adroit
and ubiquitous.
The problem, I suggest, is not that young people don't hear the
anti-drug message. It is that they aren't listening. And they
aren't listening because the message is muddled, dishonest, and
propagandistic.
Consider, for example, the largest drug prevention program in
schools, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.). A peculiar mix
of education, psychology and law enforcement, D.A.R.E. does not tell
kids to say no to drugs. Rather, it tells them that they have
the "right to say no," implying that they have the "right
to say yes."
The Portland, Maine, D.A.R.E. officer put it this way "I tell
kids they can smoke dope if they want, as long as they consider
the consequences." Just say maybe.
Anti-drug messages routinely deceive audiences by exaggerating
the risks of marijuana, often erroneously described as a "gateway
drug." Thus young people are told that marijuana causes cancer,
or amotivational syndrome, or immune system or testosterone deficiencies,
or birth defects, or any of a long false list of horribles. Problem
is, as kids grow up and see little or no negative consequences,
they realize that they were lied to about marijuana. If they can't
believe the warnings about marijuana, why should they believe
the warnings about heroin?
Anti-drug indoctrination does achieve one thing, and that is to
reinforce the existing policy of prohibiting some drugs and promoting
others. During the years of alcohol prohibition (1920-33), tens
of thousands of people were killed and seriously injured from
drinking concoctions of unknown purity or potency. Their stories
might dramatically illustrate why heroin is so dangerous today,
but those stories are not being told, because to tell them is
to raise uncomfortable questions about the wisdom and efficacy
of prohibition.
Are some drugs illegal because they are bad, or bad because they
are illegal? If the drug war were really about drugs, would not
alcohol and tobacco be outlawed? Why aren't we bothered by the
hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by those drugs?
Curiously, major sponsors of the Partnership for Drug-Free America
include the alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, who
have a direct stake in keeping their drug-dealing legal, and making
sure that their products are not seen as the drugs they are.
Everybody is for protecting people, especially the young, from
the harm of drugs, as well as securing the public health and safety,
and eliminating the crime and violence associated with illegal
trafficking. Do we achieve these goals, or merely dig ourselves
deeper into the morass, by intensifying prohibition enforcement
and the accompanying demonization campaign, as the Gazette urges?
Why not acknowledge honestly that this approach has failed, and
with compassion for the families of victims, explore alternate
means of achieving those ends?
Richard M. Evans is a lawyer with an office in Northampton.
The News & Observer, Saturday, August 19, 1995, Fayetteville,
NC.
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This editorial lauds the Fayetteville Police Department's decision
to drop the D.A.R.E. program in favor of a family-intervention program
that it considers more effective. The Observer writes "That action,
along with a reassessment of D.A.R.E. by town officials in Chapel Hill and
Carrboro, may encourage other communities to take a hard look
at whether this program is the best way to keep school kids from
using drugs."
The editorial notes that D.A.R.E. is popular with teachers, parents and
police, and commends its goal of helping children resist peer pressure
to use drugs, but points out that experts, including analysts at the
Research Triangle Institute, "haven't found that it actually reduces
or prevents drug use."
It points out that D.A.R.E. defenders points to the fact that the program
builds strong relationships with police, but dismisses that point,
noting that "the program wasn't set up as a public relations vehicle
for law enforcement. If D.A.R.E. isn't impacting on the problem it is
meant to address, the Observer writes, then it's obviously not the
best use of money or time, both of which are in scarce supply in
school systems.
The column then asks what, if D.A.R.E. doesn't work, does work? It then
notes that finding that right combination is difficult. But, it
concludes, "as long as D.A.R.E. is blindly accepted, the chances of
discovering and nurturing a better alternative grow dimmer."
Daily Hampshire Gazette, Easthampton, MA, Friday, October
6, 1995, Page 12
By Christina Rothwell, Staff Writer
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This article, from a town in western Massachusetts, describes plans
to expand the D.A.R.E. program, currently only for fifth-graders, to
include more students and even parents, as soon as the following
spring. The school system and D.A.R.E. Officer Vernon Pare, it reports,
are working together to expand the program to kindergartners through
fourth-graders as soon as the following January (1996), and that
seventh-graders might be enrolled the following September. The
article reports that the town has applied for a state grant from
the Department of Public Safety to expand the programs, at that time
running on a budget of $6000, financed by state grants and donations,
mainly from businesses.
Officer Pare, it reports, teaches the 17-week program, designed to
teach students self-esteem and how to resist peer pressure, to
fifth-graders at the White Brook Middle School and Notre Dame-
Immaculate Conception School. Two hundred White Brook students took
the program during the preceding year, and 230 fifth-graders were
preparing to enroll in it the following week.
Officer Pare, who is in his second year as a D.A.R.E. officer, is quoted,
"I love doing it. It brightens my day to see the kids.
If I am late one minute, they tell me." Patrolman William
Mielke and Police Chief Robert G. Redfern are also D.A.R.E. officers in
Easthampton.
Under the D.A.R.E. parents program, parents would meet for two hours,
once a week, for six weeks, at the Notre Dame School, for education
on how their actions affect their children.
Speaking about working with younger children Officer Pare says
"I would love to do it. It would be a lot of fun." He
hopes it will allow young children to get to know the D.A.R.E. officer
better and feel more comfortable talking with him. He also feels
the seventh-grade program would be a change, because teenage
students have different attitudes and more freedom. "That
also should reinforce a positive relationship with police just as
those youngsters enter their teen-age years.".
Los Angeles Times, Saturday, October 21, 1995, Page B1
Education: Attempts to discourage use are largely ineffective,
researchers say. But state has no plans to publish findings.
By Erin Texeira, Times Staff Writer
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This article reports on a comprehensive study commissioned by the
California Department Education that found that school-based programs
like D.A.R.E. and Red Ribbon Week are ineffective. It reports that the
study, conducted by a coalition of researchers and professors, finds
that drug and alcohol programs based on lectures and assemblies "lack
credibility with the state's teenagers and fail to reach the students
most at risk of using drugs." The Department of Education, however,
disputes the study's findings and does not intend to publish it.
Greg Wolf, a consultant for the Department, is quoted saying,
"Our problems with this study had to do with what we though
was faulty methodology." Wolf, who was not directly involved
with the study, did not give any specific examples of this, and other
department officials "could not be reached for comment." Researchers,
however, defended the study, and could not understand why the state
has taken the unusual step of not publishing its own research. (The
study is now available in full text on the web at
http://www.soros.org/lindesmith/tlcbrow.html.) More than 40% of
the students in study, who had been randomly polled, said that school
anti-drug programs affected their decision whether or not to use drugs
"not at all".
The article then described the D.A.R.E. program, a 17-week curriculum
beginning in the fifth grade, started by the Los Angeles Police
Department, that "focuses on the problems created by drug use and
tries to teach them that drug use is not universal." Sgt. George
Villalobos, an administrative supervisor for the program, is quoted
saying ""There is no way to truly gauge the effectiveness of
D.A.R.E., but we know it's successful because of the people we talk to
all the time. I'd like to know what [those who conducted the study]
recommend in place of this."
The researchers, Joel Brown of Berkeley-based Pacific Institute
for Research and Evaluation, Marianne D'Emidio-Caston of UC Santa
Barbara and Jordan Horowitz of Southwest Regional Laboratory in
Los Alamitos, spent more than three years conducting research
for the study, according to the article. They had reported their
findings at a convention in Santa Monica the preceding Friday.
The study, which involved 5,000 students and 240 schools, found that
students became more and more jaded about drug-prevention programs
as they grew older. It found that while only 10 percent of
elementary school students had a negative or neutral attitude toward
drug-prevention programs, that number increased to 90 percent of
high school students; and that 7 in 10 students felt a negative or
neutral attitude toward their drug-prevention educators and 3 in 10
disliked their drug-prevention counselors "a little" or
"a lot." One elementary school student was quoted as
responding "Oh, they lie to you so that you won't do drugs."
A high school student stated, "They are not in this for helping
you, they are in for getting rid of the bad kids and just having
all the good kids in school."
According to the article, a growing body of research is finding that
the most effective programs engage children in role-playing and group
discussions, rather have them listen to an adult standing in front of
the class urging them to abstain.
