Pubdate: Mon, 18 Sep 2006
Source: Tulsa World (OK)
Copyright: 2006 World Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.tulsaworld.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/463
Author: Matt Elliott, World Scene Writer

DARE TO BE DIFFERENT

Long-running Drug Prevention Program Sees Changes, Possible Cuts

The future of Oklahoma's largest and most-recognized anti-drug 
campaign is in doubt.

This year, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program -- DARE -- was 
funded by a $42,742 Justice Assistance Block Grant. That grant 
expires in October, said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. Herbert 
McDonald, the state's DARE coordinator.

The controversial program can be expensive for smaller agencies and 
has been both criticized and praised in numerous studies since the 
1990s. DARE police officers who teach its curriculum must be 
re-certified every year, McDonald said, and the state DARE office 
handles those classes, as well as the training of new officers.

If that state office closes, it would mean that about 240 Oklahoma 
schools and 100 school districts would lose the program, because 
local law enforcement agencies can't absorb training costs, officials said.

"We've got 81 different PD and sheriff's offices that are involved in 
DARE," McDonald said.

To save the local program, its organizers within the state Department 
of Public Safety, which oversees the Highway Patrol, will seek money 
during the next legislative session in February, McDonald said.

The public safety department has given program operators enough money 
to operate until the legislative session.

The number of programs using DARE nationwide dipped three or four 
years ago, said DARE America Regional Director John Lindsay. A 
revision of the program changed the curriculum to involve students more.

"What the new DARE does is it puts that officer in the role of the 
facilitator, where he or she is drawing the answers out of the 
students," Lindsay said. Previously, the officer would simply lecture 
students on the dangers of drug use.

Also, the course was shortened from 17 weeks to 10 weeks, helping 
streamline it. "It's much more than the old-fashioned, 'Just Say No' 
campaign," Lindsay said.

The Critics

The Bartlesville Police Department had a DARE program when Chief Leo 
Willey arrived in 2000, but Willey said it was never comprehensive, 
and he discontinued it three years ago.

"You can only do what you can pay for," Willey said. "We used to have 
a grant that started that. We had a school resource officers program, 
too, on a grant."

The city provided equipment such as cars and uniforms, Willey said, 
and the schools supplied the students and classrooms.

Federal funds quit coming, and Willey later cut DARE.

John Hamill, Tulsa Public Schools spokesman, said his district 
dropped DARE about six or seven years ago. He compared DARE to 
efforts such as the 1936 film "Reefer Madness."

"In other words, I got the standard 'Marijuana will make you go 
blind, grow hair on your palms and you'll go crazy' when I was at 
Edison in the '50s. That stuff didn't work," Hamill said.

And DARE, when it was eliminated in Tulsa schools, wasn't 
research-based at the time, Hamill said, adding that programs that 
teach better decision making are more successful.

During his career, Willey said he's seen more studies criticizing 
DARE than studies that found it to be successful.

For example, a 1999 study - cited in an August 2000 Harvard Mental 
Health Letter - surveyed 1,002 men and women from ages 19 to 21 who 
had drug education training or DARE in the sixth grade.

The study determined that the individuals' drug use, attitudes, 
self-esteem and peer pressure resistance hadn't changed from when 
they were surveyed before they'd been exposed to DARE, the report 
states. In response, Lindsay said in 2000 the National Medical 
Association evaluation found the program's training cut teenage smoking rates.

Also, a study of 3,150 Ohio high school juniors found that the 
students who completed at least two DARE semesters in elementary 
school were less likely to become high-risk substance abusers, states 
an article in Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Weekly published in 1998.

More results are yet to come. Lindsay pointed to an unfinished Robert 
Wood Johnson Foundation-funded study conducted by the University of 
Akron that has yielded promising preliminary results.

The about $13 million, five-year study is nearly complete, Lindsay 
said, and surveys 19,000 students from 122 middle schools and 83 high 
schools, DARE reports.

The University of Akron researchers testing DARE are the same ones 
who helped devised its new curriculum.

DARE In McAlester

Clyde Heathcock, director of school safety for McAlester Public 
Schools, has a staff of only three officers, including himself. But 
both of his officers teach DARE in the classroom while serving as 
guards for the district's schools.

Whatever the researchers say, Heathcock said having an officer 
interacting with the school children at an early age makes DARE worthwhile.

"Where I really see the benefit of it is that relationship that these 
kids - these fourth- and fifth-graders and seventhgraders - receive 
with the officers in the classroom with them," Heathcock said. 
"Whenever they have a problem, they don't just see us as that 
authority figure that they see on TV."

That relationship helps police address problems that develop later 
because they already have the bond with students, he said.

The campus police first started DARE in 2000 when McAlester police 
had several DARE officers, Heathcock said. Later, the police 
discontinued their program and Heathcock's officers now conduct it 
alone. They taught about 1,500 students last year, he said.

One officer teaches the class, leaving two officers to handle 
anything that happens at the other area schools, Heathcock said.

"It's hard on a small agency to get out and do that, but we're 
willing to make that sacrifice for the end results," he said.

The campus police didn't receive enough donations this year for the 
program, so they had to use money left over from last year to teach 
this year's class, Heathcock said.

They've spent $1,700 on class materials this year, exhausting what 
was left, Lt. Brenda Kelley-Fields said.

"What we buy from now on will be out of our pockets or donations," 
Kelley- Fields said.

Despite that, Kelley-Fields said DARE is worth it. She sees the 
results when former students come home from college and thank her for 
what she taught them about substance abuse.

"I believe the DARE program works, because if we don't educate our 
children on the consequences of drugs and alcohol, the drug problem 
will progressively get worse," Kelley-Fields said.

"The alcohol problem will progressively get worse. Our crime rate's 
going to increase because where there are drugs and alcohol, there's crime."

[Sidebar]

About DARE

DARE can be found in 75 percent of schools nationwide, the 
organization reports. The program has been in Oklahoma since 1985, 
Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. Herbert McDonald said.

It was founded in 1983 in Los Angeles and some studies published in 
the 1990s stated that, despite its aggressive marketing, DARE's 
approach wasn't significantly affecting whether or not children use drugs.

To learn its curriculum, DARE officers go through 80 hours of 
training, which now certifies them as school resource officers and 
trains them in middle school and elementary school courses, DARE 
America Regional Director John Lindsay said.

DARE seems to be rebounding - possibly because of the new curriculum, 
Lindsay said.

DARE is online at dare.com.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Elaine