Why Lansing’s DARE program deserved to die

Faced with crushing budget shortfalls last summer, Mayor Tony Benavides decided to cancel the DARE program in Lansing schools. And throughout the recent mayoral race, Benavides’ opponent, state Sen. Virg Bernero, made it clear that if elected, he intended to restore the DARE program. “Eliminating the DARE program – that’s the wrong kind of leadership,” he said of Benavides in their only televised debate.

To understand whether DARE – to which two Lansing police officers were devoted full time — really is a program worth reinstating in Lansing, it’s important to understand what DARE is today and where it came from.

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program began in Los Angeles schools in 1983. It was a fusion of two different programs originally developed by the University of Southern California to improve students’ self-esteem and help them resist alcohol and cigarette advertising.

Today, at least 70 percent of school districts nationwide use DARE, as well as 10 million foreign students in 54 countries. The program has been modified at least 10 times, but the basic structure remains the same. A specially trained police officer teaches students how to resist various peer pressures, different ways to say “no” to drugs, and alternative ways to have fun without drugs.

But recently, the program has lost some popularity. Prominent districts as diverse as Seattle, Omaha, and Milwaukee have done away with the program entirely. Michigan districts like Harper Woods, Oxford, West Bloomfield and Clarkston have also dropped DARE. “It’s a feel-good program,” Harper Woods Police Chief Larry Semple said in a February 2000 Detroit News interview. “It’s good P.R. to get police interacting with the children. But there’s no hard data to support its long-term effect on keeping kids off drugs and alcohol.”

The police chief is right. The most recent and most authoritative analysis of the DARE program comes from the General Accounting Office, a federal agency whose motto is “Accountability, Integrity, Reliability.” In a 2003 analysis of DARE requested by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), the GAO reviewed six different long-term evaluations of DARE’s effectiveness. They found “in brief, the 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 and students who did not.”

This is hardly earth-shattering news. What is truly astounding is that no rigorous, long-term study has ever shown that DARE has any impact on drug abuse. Attitudes toward drug use may temporarily “improve,” but there is no real effect. A peer review of one of the first studies on DARE indicates that the program actually generates drug use in girls. Yet this year alone, 36 million children worldwide will receive some incarnation of DARE indoctrination. How can this be?

Each time a new scientific review of DARE is conducted and results show that the program is worthless, DARE executives announce that the program is undergoing major revisions. They currently claim they are developing a curriculum devoting more time to teach children normative beliefs about drug use, consequences of drug and alcohol use, and drug use resistance skills. A new study, they insist, will be out by 2006.

But let’s hope DARE America likes what the researchers have to say. When the National Institute of Justice refused to publish a 1994 study of DARE, the widely respected American Journal of Public Health decided to publish it over DARE’s objections. Publication director Sabine Beisler told USA Today in October 1994, “DARE has tried to interfere with the publication of this. They tried to intimidate us.”

In all of the slight modifications made to DARE, one thing that has never wavered is the use of police officers, not teachers, to institute DARE. Some educators feel that a more effective approach might be a course in which teachers would correct misconceptions students have about drugs and then let them decide the rest themselves. Instead, police are in schools telling children what to think and what to say to their friends. There is no question in the scientific community that the effects of this form of instruction quickly diminish over time.

It is encouraging that in January 2002, the guidelines for the distribution of federal funds for anti-drug programs was revised to remove the requirements the each program must teach that “illegal alcohol and other drug use” is “wrong” and “harmful.” One of the reasons students are so disaffected by DARE is its zero-tolerance messages that lump all illegal drugs into the same category. DARE teaches that anyone who tries any drug will immediately enter a destructive downward spiral that will destroy their lives. When students learn the truth, they may feel as though they have been lied to and disregard the message entirely.

But the founder of DARE will hear none of this. “There is no room for doubt,” Glenn Levant, a former Los Angeles deputy police chief who is president of DARE America, told The Detroit News when questioned about the efficacy of the zero-tolerance message. “I’m curious why a researcher would think otherwise unless they are with a pro-legalization network.”

DARE also insists on actively pushing the “gateway drug” principle. An excerpt from a 1997 book written by Levant outlines the gateway logic perfectly: “Tobacco use is also a gateway for other negative behaviors, not just more dangerous drug taking. Cigarette smokers are also more likely to get into fights, carry weapons, attempt suicide, and engage in high-risk sexual behaviors.”

The reason DARE continues today is the same reason the War on Drugs continues today, and is the same political truism that reduces our leaders to senseless jabbering buffoons when they’re confronted with it. Being viewed as “soft on drugs” is certain campaign suicide. And if even the slightest weakness is exposed, an opportunist will swoop in to take advantage of it. But as we all know, zero tolerance makes zero sense. And that’s why Lansing should dare to teach its students to think for themselves.

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