It’s Time to Revamp the DARE Program

Last year, one of my classmates passed away by heroin overdose. What was wrong? We all participated in the popular DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program. DARE focuses on how to avoid pressure from colleagues, "just say no to drug", but it always shows that children are likely to take medication by companion pressure. For my friend, the answer is "no". His drug abuse is due to the past terrible family life and family history of drug poisoning. My fallen friend thinks he is saying he is not a friend when he asks him to be a drug.

Self-esteem and resistance are the two major foundations of drug abuse resistance education programs, also known as DARE. From the 1980s to the 1990s, DARE expanded from small-scale regional programs to large-scale large-scale expensive nationwide anti-narcotics campaigns. At peak time, DARE will be conducted at 75% of US schools and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It has beautiful 90's stolen product brand and baritone turf mascot, "The Daren's Lion". DARE began in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Police chief Daryl Gates of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) helped create a plan and became the first flaw. The story says that when Gates notices an increase in the number of drugs on campus, his idea is to concentrate on prevention education rather than punishment. As Gates told the Los Angeles Times in 1993:

In the 1990s, many police hired staff specializing in the DARE project. DARE is a drug prevention program for school-aged children developed by Los Angeles Police Department in California, and uses school uniform patrol staff to educate school children on the risk of drug use. DARE officials often have offices in public schools where children can easily access information and ask questions. Initial evaluation indicated that DARE was functioning, and in the 1990s many departments assigned unified personnel to the DARE project. Unfortunately, the long-term evaluation of the program shows that the long-term impact of project DARE is not as beneficial as it was once thought; in practice they may not exist (eg Rosenbaum et al; Rosenbaum and Hanson). For this reason, many departments phased out DARE as a preventive measure, or at least as a reorganization of the plan. Evaluation of these projects is ongoing