Is the D.A.R.E. program good for America's kids (K-12)?

"We coded Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) under 'what doesn't work?' because there is a large, rigorous evidence base of studies suggesting D.A.R.E. has little or no impact on adolescent, drug, alcohol, or tobacco use. These were also the conclusions of two systematic reviews examining the effectiveness of D.A.R.E.

...[T]he overwhelming evidence that D.A.R.E. has little or no effect on adolescent drug use led us to place this program in the 'what doesn't work'' category."

"Dare and 'Just Say No' spread fear and ignorance instead of information, placing all responsibility on the individual while denying them the tools they need to make key decisions...

[T]eens subjected to Dare remain just as likely to use drugs as those who receive no anti-drug messages...

[U]nless we radically change course and acknowledge the realities of American drug use and its underlying socioeconomic factors, millions of Dare kids like me will continue to grow up and say yes."

"[A]bout 60 Maine schools continue to use D.A.R.E. despite the fact that other prevention programs are backed by more research and have shown their ability to protect kids. The new curriculum has not been proven effective in a rural setting...

When researchers looked five and 10 years later, they found that kids who had D.A.R.E. and kids who didn't were just as likely to do drugs. Some research showed that D.A.R.E. even made kids more likely to use drugs...

There's a rural 'Keepin' it REAL' curriculum with videos that show settings in which rural kids might actually do drugs — so no nightclubs in Miami. But the only study of this version of the program just looked at whether it was carried out according to plan. It didn't measure effectiveness in preventing substance use. The classic curriculum has not been studied in any rural areas either."

"DARE argues that 'if D.A.R.E. detoured just one child....' communities should support it. Yet if a drug worked one percent of the time, the Food and Drug Administration would pull it off the market. Many experts assert that politics is what has kept the much-criticized program around for so many years, despite a mountain of evidence that it's not only ineffective but sometimes even counterproductive and causing harm to young people."

"I was - and still am - convinced that the American people had been badly betrayed. D.A.R.E. had created, through its public relations efforts, including t-shirts and bumper stickers and such, the sense, among the public, that we were really doing something by utilizing D.A.R.E. in our public schools to reduce long-term drug use in our public schools. The net result has been lost and ruined lives, many of which could have been saved through the utilization of effective drug prevention programs. I’m not simply against D.A.R.E.; I’m for effective programs."

"Across more than 30 studies, the collective evidence from evaluations with reasonably good scientific validity suggests that the core D.A.R.E. program does not prevent drug use in the short term, nor does it prevent drug use when students are ready to enter high school or college. Students who receive D.A.R.E. are indistinguishable from students who do not participate in the program. The basic question then becomes: How can we reconcile this state of knowledge with the reality of worldwide support for D.A.R.E.?...

The irony for the drug prevention field (and other fields as well) is that a program known to be ineffective receives millions of dollars in support, whereas programs known to be effective or promising are sidelined and remain unfunded."

"[T]he six long-term evaluations of the DARE elementary school curriculum that we reviewed found no significant differences in illicit drug use between students who received DARE in the fifth or sixth grade (the intervention group) and students who did not (the control group). Three of the evaluations reported that the control groups of students were provided other drug use prevention education. All of the evaluations suggested that DARE had no statistically significant long-term effect on preventing youth illicit drug use."

"One school-based universal prevention program meets the criteria for Does Not Work: Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE. DARE is the most widely implemented youth drug prevention program in the United States. It receives substantial support from parents, teachers, police, and government funding agencies, and its popularity persists despite numerous well-designed evaluations and meta-analyses that consistently show little or no deterrent effects on substance use. Overall, evidence on the effects of the traditional DARE curriculum, which is implemented in grades 5 and 6, shows that children who participate are as likely to use drugs as those who do not participate."

"The weakness in the old DARE program, as several studies suggest, was the simplicity of its message - and its panic-level assertions that 'drug abuse is everywhere.' Kids, program directors learned, don't respond well to hyperbole, and both the 'Just Say No' message and the hysteria implied in the anti-drug rhetoric were pushing students away. It's also possible, some researchers speculate, that by making drugs seem more prevalent, or 'normal' than they actually are, the DARE program might actually push kids who are anxious to fit in towards drugs."

"[D.A.R.E.] is a multibillion-dollar boondoggle that all the evidence shows has had absolutely no effect. It’s a testament to the willingness of Congress to pour billions down the drain on a feel-good program in blatant disregard of one study after another indicating that there is no impact on drug use."

"Scientific research of the [D.A.R.E] program provides information needed to assess its benefits. Many evaluations, however, show a neutral or negative effect of the D.A.R.E. program. (As a result, D.A.R.E. is no longer included on the list of approved programs, based on the 'principles of effectiveness' by the U.S. Department of Education.) The evaluations that have been done suggest that the students and the community are receiving no measurable benefit from participation in the program. From an economic perspective, this suggests that the program should be discontinued because it is costly, ineffective, and possibly counterproductive."

"I can't tell you how many kids told me DARE introduced them to drugs. The problem with DARE, other than that it's a multimillion dollar conglomerate in the business of selling T-shirts, is that it takes the burden off parents to raise their kids."

"[I]f success were measured in the number of T-shirts given away or certificates handed out, D.A.R.E. would indeed be successful. But it's not...

There's got to be a better way to educate young people about the hazards of substance abuse, but as long as a high-profile pseudo-solution is available, there's little incentive to find out what might really work. And that's the sad part - especially for the kids this program ought to be helping."

"This intellectual dishonesty is painfully apparent when agencies appropriate the educator's mandate, substituting police for professional teachers. One only has to examine the abuses of the expensive and dubiously effective DARE program in the U.S. Extensive studies detail the failures of DARE and the U.S. General Accounting Office conspicuously declined to include the program in it's recent evaluation of drug education...

I wonder if parents and local taxpayers are aware that 1998 University of Illinois research found greater drug use among students who had experienced DARE? In our information-based society we can't patronize people anymore, regardless of their age. A resurgence of marijuana use in Western societies is remarkably coincidental with electronic freedom of information on the world-wide web, and one must ask how many teenagers now simply disregard their cigarette-smoking or alcohol-drinking parents, teachers and police as dishonest hypocrites."