cannabisnews.com: Study: DARE Not Cutting Drug Use





Study: DARE Not Cutting Drug Use
Posted by FoM on May 02, 2000 at 07:58:33 PT
Reuters
Source: Philly.com
Most public schools continue to use taxpayer funded drug-prevention programs that have proven to be largely ineffective in reducing drug use among students, says a study released yesterday.
Programs like DARE - or Drug Awareness and Resistance Education - that send police officers into schools to lecture students, are used in eight of 10 schools despite studies showing they do little to combat drug use, researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill said."I guess the idea behind DARE is that the police officer, who is an authority figure but also sort of a friendly figure, that this is the important ingredient that makes a difference. But that idea doesn't seem to pan out," said Denise Hallfors, a professor at UNC's School of Public Health.The U.S. Department of Education spent $566 million - or about $5 per child - on drug prevention programs last year. Under a policy adopted in 1998, schools will have to prove the programs have been effective in reducing drug use.But in recent surveys, about half of the seniors say they drink, while a third say they have been intoxicated and nearly one in four say they have smoked marijuana."The good news is that the coordinators that we surveyed were generally very positive about the new policy, and they said that there was support from their administration for improving prevention programs," Hallfors says."The bad news is that their staffing is very thin. About half the coordinators said that they spent 10 hours or less per week on substance abuse prevention. Half of them have less than one full-time equivalent, which is really very low." Chapel Hill, N.C. Published: May 2, 2000 ©2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. CannabisNews Articles & Archives On DARE Related News Items:  http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/list/DARE.shtmlhttp://alltheweb.com/cgi-bin/search?type=all&query=cannabisnews+dare
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Comment #4 posted by Taboke on June 03, 2000 at 07:57:28 PT:
Dare 
Dare is a course that i have been through. It just says "kids dont do drugs like marijuana, they make u feel good and dont cause cancer or anything else bad" I feel that it encouraged drug use among teens. We took the course in 6th grade. After that people started experementing. One peorson started selling after it. I think it just makes people more interested. 
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Comment #3 posted by alex on May 08, 2000 at 08:34:17 PT
D.A.R.E. sux
all dare does is teaches kids about drugs and how to use drugs.they should change there slogan to:D.A.R.E. to teach kids about drugs
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Comment #2 posted by Tim Stone on May 02, 2000 at 14:05:21 PT
Who Votes?
Who votes, parents or children? He asked rhetorically. Parents of course. Therefore much of the drug war, while purporting to be "for the children," is in fact, as a political reality, for the adults, because they vote. The assumption being that whatever parents have been conditioned to think is good for the children must actually be good for the children. For may parents, including many who smoked a fashionable amount of weed Back When, part of protecting children is giving them the necessary innoculations against childhood diseases. It is a poor parent indeed who would not make darned sure hir child was immunized against polio, rubella, etc. I suspect many parents _who should know better, wink wink, nudge nudge_ support DARE as just another "innoculation" to protect their children against the "disease" of illicit drug use, and therefore any responsible parent will swallow any nagging doubts and get with the responsible parent program by supporting DARE and such programs. That way at least the other mothers in the soccer club driving pool won't nag them for being a bad parent by not protecting their child from "Drugs," just as they would polio, etc. Parental peer pressure is underrated as a force in support of the drug war. It helps explain why so many parents who know better still toe the drug war party line, at least in public. 
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Comment #1 posted by legalizeit on May 02, 2000 at 09:21:29 PT
DARE to end DARE
>"I guess the idea behind DARE is that the police officer, who is an authority figure but also sort of a friendly figure..."Yeah, just let him see you with a small amount of a certain plant and see how "friendly" he is.>about half of the seniors say they drinkBut alcohol is not a drug! No problem!!DARE's main effect is letting formerly naive kids know what kinds of drugs are out there and what their effects are. Then, of course, they will get curious and want to experiment! DARE is NOT the solution and neither is the WOsD.
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