D.A.R.E. Program Teaches Kids How to Recognize

D.A.R.E. program teaches kids how to recognize and resist the direct and subtle pressures that influence them to experiment with alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drugs. Did you or anyone you know go through the D.A.R.E. curriculum? What do you have to say about the program? Would you like to see the D.A.R.E. program continued in our nation's schools? Why or why not? (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) administers a school-based substance abuse, gang, and violence prevention program in 75% of U.S.

school districts and in 48 countries (as of 2013); since 1983, 70,000 police officers have taught the D.A.R.E. program to over 200 million K-12 students worldwide -- approximately 114 million in the United States alone (ProCon, N.d.). The effectiveness of the program is a heavily debated subject. There is more evidence, peer-reviewed studies, which point to the program being effective in reducing the number of youth involved in drug use. However, there are also many studies that have found evidence to the contrary.

In fact, some of the evidence even points to the possibility that the program might even be counter-productive in preventing youth from trying drugs. D.A.R.E.'s funding is enormous and the effectiveness of the program is a critical decision making point. This analysis will argue that the D.A.R.E. program is most likely not a justifiable use of the public resources. Issues with the D.A.R.E.

Program One of the most alarming factors that has been argued is that, not only is the D.A.R.E. program ineffective, but it is actually counter-productive and can lead to higher drug usage rates among children and adolescence. If this were the case, then the U.S. government, through its various agencies, would actually be contributing to the drug problem with their attempts to intervene with children. The amount of funding that the program receives is astronomical by some accounts.

After many requests, neither the government officials who hand out the money nor DARE executives themselves can put a definitive price tag on it, but estimates from several independent experts range from $1 billion to more than $2 billion annually (Riskind, 2002). With this kind of funding, the effectiveness of the program should be studied with considerable intensity. One study that included nearly twenty thousand students from six metropolitan areas and were randomized to treatment (41) or control (42) conditions.

The study focused on a program that was called Take Charge of Your Life (TCYL) and was administered by the same Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) police officers presented who presented a similar program referred to as the TCYL in seventh and ninth grades in treatment schools (Sloboda, et al., 2009).

The effect of the analyses showed a negative program effect for use of alcohol and cigarettes and no effect for marijuana use; subgroup analyses indicated that the negative effect occurred among nonusers at baseline, and mostly among white students of both genders; a positive program effect was found for students who used marijuana at baseline (Sloboda, et al., 2009). Thus for all the students who were not currently using marijuana, the program was counterproductive. Other studies have attempted to explore the differences of findings that have occurred in different research attempts.

Some studies have indicated that the program was effective while others, such as the one mentioned, have shown the program to be counterproductive. One study explores the possibility that any drug prevention program might be considered "evidence-based" given the use of data analysis procedures that optimize the chance of producing statistically significant results by reanalyzing data from a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program evaluation (Gorman & Huber, 2009).

This studied used some of the same data that was used to by the so called "evidence-based" approaches but found statistically different results. Many of these differences occurred at cutoff points on the assessment scales for which post hoc meaningful labels were created. Therefore the different methods used to interpret data reasonably account for the differences that have been found over the years. Although it is hard to prove conclusively that the D.A.R.E.

program is completely ineffective or even counterproductive, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the use of public funding could be better spent in other ventures. The program receives as substantial amount of.