Pubdate: Mon, 03 Jul 2000 Source: Times-News, The (ID) Copyright: 2000 Magic Valley Newspapers Contact: P.O. Box 548, Twin Falls, ID 83303 Fax: (208) 734-553 Feedback: http://www.magicvalley.com/submit.html Website: http://www.magicvalley.com/ Author: From The Salt Lake Tribune Note: Original editorial can be found at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n891/a02.html DARE IS A FEEL-GOOD, DO-LITTLE WASTE OF TIME Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson is on firm if unpopular ground in his recent criticism of the nation's largest anti-drug education program, Drug Abuse Resistance Education or DARE, which uses police officers in the schools to teach youngsters about the evils of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Anderson wants to dismantle it. The Salt Lake City Police Department spends about $289,000 annually on DARE in Salt Lake City elementary and secondary schools. Nationally, the program is used in 75 percent of the nation's school districts and has grown since its beginning in 1983 as a Los Angeles police program into a $750 million per annum industry, funded mostly by taxpayers. It is marketed like such an industry, too, with DARE-marked T-shirts, balloons, bumper stickers, police cars and even garbage trucks. Despite its heavy promotion and the copious spending upon it, a number of studies show that DARE largely is ineffective in discouraging drug use by young people. University of Michigan researcher Lloyd Johnston, for example, focused on eighth-graders. He found that drug use -- marijuana, alcohol, smoking -- among them increased between 1991 and 1994. A Justice Department study in 1994 that analyzed eight DARE studies found that the program had little or no effect on reducing drug use. Other communities already have done what Anderson is proposing. Snohomish County, north of Seattle, for example, dropped out of DARE in 1997 largely because it was not achieving its purpose of discouraging drug experimentation among youth. Anderson likely will be criticized for daring to question DARE. Despite its questionable success, the program is popular and plenty of officials, like federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey, remain bullish about it. DARE is one of the best-known components of the anti-drug war, a long-running fight in which victory remains elusive. The mayor's skepticism, however, is justified. However noble sounding, however positive it seems, any program which spends nearly $300,000 of public funds each year should have a clear, empirical track record of measurable success. DARE does not. - --- MAP posted-by: greg