You Decide
Is DARE a “good” drug prevention
program?
The Drug Abuse Resistance Education
(DARE) program started in 1983, when the Los Angeles Los Angeles Police
Department and the
Table 5.1
DARE lessons
[pick up
CJ5e, Table 6.4, p. 165]
Officers
are taught how to change their “hardened street ways” into “caring teaching
skills.” Officer Harreld D. Webster, a DARE mentor,
puts it this way: “We assist them to remove the macho image and become
teachers.” Webster said DARE, once ridiculed by officers as “kiddie cops,” has gained respect. (Rheinhold
1989)
The results of evaluations are mixed.
The
Dennis P. Rosenbaum and his colleagues
(1994, 1-31) conducted an extensive, thorough, and methodologically sound study
of DARE. They established and carried out a longitudinal, randomized experiment
to estimate the effects of DARE on the attitudes, beliefs, and drug use of
students in the year following exposure to the program. They found no
statistically significant overall effect on drug use, and few effects on
attitudes or beliefs about drugs. There was one encouraging result—girls who
went through DARE were twice as likely as girls without DARE to quit drinking.
But DARE had an opposite effect on boys who went through DARE—they were less
likely to stop drinking than boys who didn’t.
Some kids in DARE report their
parents’ drug use to the police. Should they? Some (by no means all) officers
encourage kids to do so. When the officers find out parents are drug users they
arrest them. Is this right?
Police Chief James Gilway
teaches a DARE class at
Chief Gilway
said
The next day, Chief Gilway and two state drug agents interviewed
Inside the house, police confiscated
the marijuana plants. At full height, the plants could’ve produced one ounce of
smokeable marijuana. Officers arrested
Still troubled a year later,
“This is the stuff of Orwellian
fiction,” said Gary Peterson, head of Parents Against
DARE. “This is Big Brother putting spies in our homes.” Parents Against DARE, consisting of about 20 families, questions
whether the police can teach objectively about drugs. Although the parents
oppose drug use by their children, some of them smoke marijuana. The parents
wonder if DARE is turning their children against them.
Law enforcement officers say kids
hardly ever rat on their parents. “There are skeptics out there who think this
is a program to spy on families. That’s simply not true. The main purpose is to
curb drug use,” said Captain Patrick Froehle,
commanding officer for the Los Angeles Police Department DARE division.
Furthermore, police insist they’d be shirking their duty not to act on
the information because kids would be living with parents who might be
neglecting or abusing them. According to Captain Froehle
(
In such environments, there are
usually no morals, values or training for the child. My personal opinion is
that an arrest is the best thing that could ever happen to that parent.
Marijuana could lead to harder drugs, which, in turn, could ultimately lead to
death. What may turn out to be negative for the parent is positive for society.
Also, students aren’t allowed to
mention names in DARE classes. According to police, what happens after class
between the officer and the kids is no different from what happens in other
crimes. But some officers have qualms about using the information. “You’re
damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Sometimes, I almost feel like a
traitor,” says Officer Anne Corcoran, a DARE teacher for the Boston Police
Department. “I look into the children’s eyes and I see them saying, ‘How dare
you? I confided in you and you let me down.’”
No one knows how many students tell on
their parents. The police don’t collect the numbers, and they don’t volunteer
to hand over information they have. Parents who are charged usually want to
avoid publicity. In one case, a DARE student turned in her stepfather, a
professor at a small college in
The question became a matter of public
debate in
Questions
1.
Summarize the finding on the effectiveness of DARE. On the basis of the
research would you recommend continuing DARE? Dropping DARE? More research?
Defend your answer.
2. List the arguments for and against
kids reporting their parents’ drug use to police. What policy do you favor?
Back up your answer with the arguments you listed.