The Effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. Program
Since the period that Regan administration was in office, National D.A.R.E. Day has been promoted and endorsed by each succeeding president. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program administers a school-based substance abuse, gang, and violence prevention program in seventy-five percent of school districts in the United States. This prominent educational system is also taught in forty-eight other nations around the globe (Slobodan, et. al.). The goal of the D.A.R.E. program is to help students both recognize and resist the pressure to experiment with alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drugs, as well as encouraging students to abstain from engaging in violence. Throughout the entire duration of D.A.R.E.’s administration, there have been debates by the public arguing whether this program is actually serving its intended substantial purpose for youth or whether it is merely another waste of American tax dollars. One of the biggest questions, though, is whether or not this program negatively or positively affects the D.A.R.E. “graduates”. Despite the constructive means by which the program operates and portrays its light, a large portion of the public eye still fails see the D.A.R.E. program as a saving grace for the futures of our youth.
Created by the L.A.P.D. after Nancy Regan’s “Just Say No” campaign, D.A.R.E. immediately became a topic of popular dispute. Those who claim that the program is ineffective argue that it is due to the simplicity of its message, in conjunction with panic-level assertions stating “drug abuse is everywhere” (Slobodan, et. al.). In the same manner, it is nearly common knowledge that telling a young person, or any person at all, not to do something usually results in them doing just the opposite. Furthermore, a study done by DualDiagnosis.org states that the D.A.R.E. program does not deter students from using drugs such as marijuana. In fact, the study showed that there was actually an increase in the use of drugs. This study performed in 1998, noted a fifty percent decreased likelihood of high-risk drug use among students who participated in the program. On the other hand the research, between 1992 and 1995, there was a fifty-nine percent increase of illegal drug use among high school seniors in addition to a ninety-two percent increase among eighth graders reporting lifetime use of marijuana (DualDiagnosis.org).
As a professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Richard L. Dukes deemed it necessary to further scrutinize studies correlating the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. program on its participants compared to their average peers.
“The long-term effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) was assessed by contrasting drug use … variables among 356 twelfth-grade students who had received the program in the 6th grade with 264 others who did not receive it. A prior study of these subjects when they were in 9th grade had shown no significant differences. A follow-up survey in 12th grade assessed central D.A.R.E. concepts such as self-esteem … delay of experimentation with drugs, and various forms of drug use. Although the authors found no relationship between prior D.A.R.E. participation and later alcohol use, cigarette smoking, or marijuana use in 12th grade, there was a significant relationship between earlier D.A.R.E. participation and less use of illegal, more deviant drugs (e.g., inhalants, cocaine, LSD) …”
Duke went on to state that over time D.A.R.E. might evoke students fall under the subconscious application of the sleeper effect: the message originating from a low-credibility source will increase in its persuasiveness over time (ChangingMinds.org).
With regards to D.A.R.E., this reaction is holds true to students abstaining from the use of harder drugs, especially in teenage males (Dukes).
In the article “School-Based Substance Abuse Prevention: Political Finger-Pointing Does Not Work”, Michelle R. Burke states that “schools are suitable locations for educating adolescents about health risks, as schools have access to the majority of the nation’s youth … [at] the most crime prone … years (Burke)”. However, Burke goes on to explain that the program has come under serious scrutiny by researchers whose studies reveal that the program does not show signs of reducing drug use among children exposed to the program. Research showed that students who completed the D.A.R.E program used drugs at the same rate as those who had not taken the course, and in some cases the numbers were slightly higher for the students who had been through the program.
Because gender roles and stereotypes do act as a functioning member of society, it is imperative to inquire if gender matters. The Journal of Alcohol & Drug Education composed an article addressing this topic: “female and male drug users or potential users could be successfully treated in a gender-neutral educational program … but female adolescents will be more likely to use [drugs] if they believe that the substance has been widely used”, suggesting that females are more susceptible to peer pressure and drug use than their male counterparts. (Zhong, et. al. 16)”. The authors of the article agreed that the educational setting is a good place to conduct these types of prevention programs such as the D.A.R.E. program, just as Burke stated in her writings, because this is where students spend most of their time and will at some point be placed in a peer-pressured situation. The D.A.R.E. program believes that if it can intervene the problem at the source, only then can it reduce the drug use and abuse in students. These authors took on a different perceptive as to why the program continues to produce mediocre results. D.A.R.E. techniques were originally developed primarily for males. Support for the gender-neutral program is mainly driven by a belief in social psychological gender similarities on learning abilities. Psychologists agree that there are few gender differences in the youth’s ability to obtain knowledge and that there are no general gender differences in IQ. Those who are in favor of gender-sensitive programs say that females and males face different external and internal factors that contribute to substance abuse. These authors also state that for females, substance use is introduced as a coping strategy to relieve stress. On the other hand males tend to associate substance abuse with being cool or looking older. “Therefore, their attitudes toward substance use may be derived from different gender roles and the program must address the different gender role expectations for females and males in order to change their attitudes (Zhong et. al. 16)”.
Additionally, two individuals at Tennessee Technological University composed “Does D.A.R.E. work? An Evaluation in Rural Tennessee”, an article that uses an example of a study performed in 1995 on the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. program in a southern New Jersey township. There were virtually no differences between students who experienced the D.A.R.E. program and non-D.A.R.E. groups. Matthew Zagumny and Michael Thomson found that the only significant difference between the two groups of students was the number of criminal offenses of the D.A.R.E. students, which may suggest that the program actually increased criminal behavior. In the study performed at a rural Tennessee high school, Zagumny and Thompson used the data from the 1991 Non-D.A.R.E. students, the 1996 Non-Dare students and the 1996 D.A.R.E. students. When analyzing this data, there were only significant differences between 1991 non-D.A.R.E students and 1996 D.A.R.E. participants, deeming the D.A.R.E program ineffective because there were not substantial changes to be compared to the 1996 non-D.A.R.E. students as well (Zagumny, Thompson 38). The D.A.R.E. organization would suggest that this is the long-term effect of the program, but when you look at the numbers from both sets of students from the D.A.R.E. graduates in 1996, there are hardly any differences in the number of students abusing alcohol and drugs. Because these highly contrasting statistics were not seen in some manner of each case, it can be said that the D.A.R.E. program is not as effective as it claims to be.
Though the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program seems worthy of praise in its purpose, it shows that there is at least slight reason to negate the D.A.R.E. program’s glory. Much of the research concluded analytic results that were contrary to the intended purpose and beliefs of the program. Though the program seems deserving of recognition for its morally correct teachings and its long run in global educational systems, it may be time for D.A.R.E. to take a different approach to achieve more substantial, time-rendering results.