I always imagined the DARE program was envisioned by hardened, cynical police dectives who have seen so much hard life they’re on the verge of giving up. I mean really, we DARE you to keep kids of drugs. Go ahead, try it. As a matter of fact, we Double Dog DARE you. And after that, we DARE you to stick your tounge to the frozen flag pole…
My public-health-expert wife worked on a study here in Washington State evaluating a violence-prevention program built on the DARE model. Result: the program was a completely ineffective waste of money.
I’m hazy on the details, so I’ll see if I can get her to post in this thread.
It’s been dropped in our school district. This might be because of lack of funding, and that the police thought it better to have cops in the streets than in second grade doing nothing useful. I can buy the improved attitude towards police result though - the officer on the high school and junior high campuses seem to be good at building relationships with the kids.
I’ll second or third the objection to DARE that others have expressed - it treats all drugs the same. Since is the same attitude that gets kids expelled for bringing Tylenol to school. My wife, who writes on both health and parenting issues, really despises the program for this reason.
A friend of mine used to buy drugs from his DARE officer. I doubt there are many like that, but, yeah, it definitely wasn’t effective in his case.
Please clarify. Was your friend actually doing drugs in fourth/fifth grade, or was your friend buying drugs from the DARE officer when he was older? 
Our DARE officer in elementary school took out his gun after much pestering by us students; he was going to show it to us, then he dropped it on the floor. I picked it up and handed it to him. The first time I held a handgun.
That’s exactly what I was suggesting. 
Several years back a couple of arrests like that led to some smart guy marketing T-Shirts reading DARE: I sent my parents to prison and all I got was this stinking T=shirt There’s a anecdotal story halfway down thispage.
The naive notion that caffiene, nicotine, etc are just as bad as “hard” drugs has even permeated the administration. At our high school, a junior was written up for coming to school “under the influence” - because he smoked a (tobacco) cigarette on the way to school.
The assistant principal said “well, I don’t know what smoking a cigarette would do to a person’s body - it MIGHT make you high.” :eek:
Hello !!! There’s a teacher right down the hall in Drug Education who would be glad to tell you !!!.
dumb@$$.
IIRC, there was at least one major church group that was opposed to the DARE program because it was counter to family values. Seems that they didn’t approve of the idea of kids being used as informants against their parents.
I remember reading an article many years ago in The New Republic that cited the lack of effectiveness in DARE programs. It was ALSO about how people that brought this up were often then hounded by the DARE people as being pro-drug, to the point that people who spoke up against it (especially researchers) would then find themselves accused of selling drugs to kids, lose their funding, etc. When people pointed to results that said that DARE didn’t work, DARE would respond with “Oh, that’s the OLD DARE program that they based that study on. We have a new one now that works much better.” I’ll see if I can find the article on line.
When I was in the 8th grade they hand-picked the nine worst kids in school and took us to the state prison. The prisoners yelled at us, told us we were punks, told us how they could kill us before the gaurds got over there to stop them…etc. They also each told us the story of how they got there and things like that.
Of those 9 kids: 1 is dead, 3 are serving long jail terms (two for robbing a hotel and one for too many drug convictions), 1 OD’ed on xanax the day he got out of court-ordered rehab and is now wanted for murder, 1 is addicted to oxyconton (among other drugs) and working odd jobs, 1 is unaccounted for (I think he moved after high school but he was definitely headed down the wrong path), and only myself and one other guy are doing good.
Take what you will from that.
A somewhat decent drug program:
Tell the students how draconian the penalties are for any drug related offense. “Agree or disagree, this is what WILL happen to you…” With mandatory minimums and mandatory jail time, at least tell the students how tough the laws are for any drug related offense. Remind the students, in a tough economy, how many HR people will eliminate your job application for any criminal offense.
Don’t start this is 5th grade, start it in high school.
Isn’t the D.A.R.E. program just a “war on drugs” effort for kids? And we all know how well the war on drugs is going…
I can only speak for my class: heck no it wasn’t effective.
The “good” kids would have stayed away from drugs with or without DARE. The ones who became druggies probably would have been regardless of how much they were warned.
DARE doesn’t work because it’s not scary enough. The nice police officer telling you that drugs are bad, mmkay isn’t going to get it.
Take the little darlings on a field trip to the morgue. Let them go talk to the mother of someone who is in a coma because some dickhead drunk driver hit them head on. Let 'em watch somebody going through heroin withdrawal. Instead of telling them how bad drugs are, SHOW them just what they can do, all the ugly stuff. Better than sitting in a classroom, IMHO.
Not necessarily total BS. Everybody is different; personally one beer affects me enough that I know I have to wait a while before it’s safe to drive. I’m 5’10" 200lbs, alcohol just tends to hit me fast (the next couple of drinks don’t make it any worse though).
(Yes I know that one drink may not put your BAC over the legal limit, that doesn’t mean you are safe to drive)
I think that this was an opportunity to set a good example for your daughter - really simple, “Your parents don’t drink and drive”. Mom is there, she hasn’t had anything to drink, have her drive. That might just save her skin some day in college when the guy who’s had nothing but Sprite drives instead of the guy who had a beer or two.
I’ve gotta side with Val on this one. Sure, one beer probably isn’t going to make you fail a breathalyzer. So? Why not let Mom drive anyway and set a good example for the kid?
Or are you one of those guys that can’t stand to have his woman in the driver’s seat … 
Make the kids watch Requiem For A Dream.
I don’t think scary is the answer. Remember ‘Scared Straight’? Taking the youths into the prison to be spoken to by the cons and showing them what prison life was really like while verbally berating them and scaring the shit out of them? That program was ineffective as well.