Has D.A.R.E Been Effective?

macnigel asks: "I'm an editor of my school's newspaper and plan to write a commentary on the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E program. I would like to hear what Slashdot's audience has to say about the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program that's in place in most schools around the country. Comments and experiences are welcome. I raise this question in light of a fairly recent study by Harvard University. The study goes on to claim the sucess of a new approach to the problem of binge drinking. Should D.A.R.E try new approaches to the problem? Can D.A.R.E ever hope to impact drug abuse among youth?"

Particularly effective against smoking

[Raffaello]

Judging by my kids response to the program at their school, I think that DARE is amazingly effective against smoking.

They hounded me so much, that I was forced to quit (good thing too).

D.A.R.E's notoriety

[Covener]

Aren't they notorious for being largely ineffective but having tremendous pull in all sorts of local government. I've heard alot of thier strong-arm techniques on detractors -- news outlets, school officials.

Offtopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems a little outside of Slashdot's jurisdiction. Anyone agree?

Re:Has DARE been effective?

[atrowe]

Drugs Are Really Exciting!

You tell me

[Uruk]

The war on drugs is as intense as ever.
The political smoke is so thick (no pun intended) that nobody can tell if drug use is going up or down

The war on drugs is a total pathetic failure that deserves to be eliminated with all haste. Some other places in the world realize that "getting people with the program" probably shouldn't involve kicking down their door and throwing them in a federal prison so lonely inmates pay spiders for sex.

The libertarian party is on the rise, and to a certain extent the socialists and the greens as well. And what have we heard from their mouths? "I will grant an unconditional pardon to all non-violent convicts upon entering the oval office".

Check out Smokedot [smokedot.org] for more info on different perspectives on the War on Drugs.

You're asking did DARE succeed? I'ts a small component of a massive system that has totally fallen on its ass. So I would say no, all DARE did was give a few cops extra drinking money.

A Daring Change

[grovertime]

Well I was pleasantly surprised to see this post on Slashdot. I have worked on behalf of D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) in SouthWestern Ontario for some time, and in fact did some tutorial efforts in SouthCentral Los Angeles for the two years I spent there. I think it's a great program, in intention, but it is also incredibly flawed. I personally have not noticed any drop-off in binge drinking and more prevalent still, in dangerous second-tier experimentation (the chronically addictive tier of narcotics). The real question I have with federal elections upcoming in both Canada and the United States is: when will a candidate step forward with the courage to match the growing public conviction that narcotics need to be decriminalized (but still regulated)?

1. 
   My Second Vote Was For Gore [mikegallay.com]
   

No

[linuxonceleron]

DARE in my case simply equated all drug use as being the same as abuse. It also told us that drugs were equally bad, now I mean, most kids know that weed isn't as bad as say crack. We were told that weed would have us addicted the first time we ever tried it and that we would turn into losers and burnouts. I personally don't see a problem with softcore drug use in moderation, but DARE failed to make a distinguisment between the two. I'm sure many kids find that weed isn't really a bad drug, but they feel like DARE lied about everything, and then move into harder drugs. Though I will admit that even weed will get you in with the "wrong crowd" many times, and there's plenty of people who smoke too much as well.

DARE will never really be successful unless they are honest. If officer joe came in and told us that weed wouldn't kill you but it isn't good to do when you need to pay attention and to stay away from hardcore dealers maybe kids would get the message. I know plenty of people my age who responsibly use recreational drugs, and plenty who do too much when they need to be studying, etc. All in all, there needs to be more honesty and education. Most of what I've learned about drugs was online as there was no appropriate and unbiased education program in my school.

Also check out the D.A.R.E. [everything2.com] node on everything2 [everything2.com], its quite an interesting view on the issue.

Re:A Daring Change

[BluedemonX]

If you remember, Trudeau wanted to decrim, and the CIA walked into his office and threatened him and Canada with death and invasion, respectively.

Uncle Sam wants a war on drugs. Canada can never decrim.

Completely useless

[Nugget94M]

The phrase "just say no" is as effective in preventing drug abuse as saying "have a nice day" is in treating clinical depression.

Drug war lies

[grytpype]

I'm a professional, a lawyer in a big Manhattan law firm, and I can tell you that just about everyone I work with has tried weed. Some of them smoke regularly. These are successful people, very. So my experience is that weed does not automatically make you a loser and a burnout. Alcohol is a much bigger problem in every respect, and yet it its use is tolerated.

Dare to be Stupid

[z4ce]

Everytime I hear of "DARE" the song comes through my head by weird al yankovick.. "Dare to be Stupid"

Put down the chainsaw and listen to me. It's time for you to join in the fight. You better let your babies grow up to be cowboys. It's time to let the bug bed bite. You better put all of your eggs one basket. You better count your chickens before they hatch. You better sell some wine before its time. You better find yourself an itch to scratch. You better squeeze all the charmin you can when mr. whiffles not around. Stick your head in the microwave and give yourself a tan.. Talk with your mouth full. Bite the hand that feeds you. More than you can chew...
DARE TO BE STUPID! It's so easy now... I'll show you how.. you can dare to be STUPID!

Well, shit

[Boolean]

I started binge drinking because D.A.R.E made me so damned depressed!

If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson

Nope

[Jason W]

Its interesting that you bring this up now. Just yesterday in government class we had the opportunity to listen to one of the candidates for the local House seat speak. Its public record that he got a DUI when he was 19 (he's only 21 now). Even though the teacher asked him not to talk about it, he did. He said "DARE didn't work". The entire class gave a little chuckle because we all know its true. Even that very day, there was an assembly at the middle school for Red Ribbon Week, which alot of people in the high school had fun joking about what effect it had had on them.

Just from my personal experience with DARE and the health classes in my school, the basic effect is: 10% recognize the dangerous effects. 50% don't aren't swayed either way. 40% realize that the teachers, parents, and police don't want them to be drinking and smoking, so they have added incentive to do it.

And of the 10% that recognized the dangerous effects, I'd say at least half do it anyways. No-one has given them a good enough reason why not to. Most kids in middle school, especially, have no way to comprehend what their actions will cause in the future. And most kids in high school have friends a few years older than them who partied hard in high school, went to college and partied hard, and still ended up with normal jobs, normal families, and the whole bit. No-one has given a good enough reason not to do it (if one exists).

On a funny note, in health class we watched a video about binge drinking Americans crossing the border into Mexico. The video was kids partying with half naked members of the opposite sex while drinking their brains out and having the time of their life, intersperced with parents and police preaching the dangers of alcohol use. ...right, whatever you say...

Re:The problem with DARE

[cyber-vandal]

Cannabis does have one nasty side-effect. If you're worried about something and you smoke too much weed you get nightmare panic attacks. But I love it when I smoke the odd spliff and can't stop giggling. Amsterdam is my favourite city in the world closely followed by Copenhagen.

Researchers "Dared"

[rbrander]

The comment about DARE being most effective at pressuring local schools and governments and strong-arming critics has a lot of supporters in the academic community.

A New Republic article (March 3, 1997) by Stephen Glass reported on some of the studies:

• A 1987 study in Kokomo, Indiana by sociology professors Earl Wysong and Richard Aniskiewicz that concluded "DARE exposure does not produce any long-term prevention efforts on adolescent drug-use rates"
• Dick Clayton of the U. of Kentucky published in the Journal of Preventive Medicine in 1996 the results of the largest-ever study on DARE. He concluded that any effects it had were short-lived, with no effect on long-term drug use.
• Clayton also collected fifteen studies in his 1996 book Intervening with Drug-Involved Youth. The results varied somewhat, but all were consistent in agreeing that there is little-to-zero long-term effect from DARE.
• I'm Canadian, so I'll just mention that one of those studies was by the Canadian government, concluding DARE had no effect on cutting abuse of any drug from Asprin to heroin.

The bulk of the article was not on this subject, but on the remarkably brazen efforts by DARE (a near billion-dollar industry when you add up the programs nationwide and in 40+ countries) to intimidate researchers, deny them funds, slander them, etc.

Alas, all articles by Stephen Glass, were thrown into disrepute a year or so later, when it was found that he had been inventing facts in various of his works. Any ammunition DARE could have asked for to discredit this story was instantly provided.

That does not mean that for the DARE article, Glass work was tainted. The studies referred to above do exist, and the researchers involved really have been slandered and intimidated.

It would be very gratifying to hear of DARE losing converts among school systems.

Re:dare

[THB]

I grew up in Canada, and that was part of our junor high school 'health' program was having a former cocaine addict come and talk to us. I am not the type of person that would do hard drugs, but it seemed much more effective than a police officer lecturing us. The most important parts are showing kids solid proof of the effects of drug use, and making it interesting enough. Having a former addict talk goes a long way towards both of these.

Re:Has DARE been effective? In a word, NO.

[desufnoc]

well, let me put it this way, my parents decided to pull me out of public school and place me in a private school. This was right before my old school had decided to start the DARE program there. The private school that I attended had no DARE program, and never started one. When I met back up with my old freinds from public school when I went to high school, I had learned that all of them had either expiramented with drugs or were continual users. So, from my expirience, no, it hasn't been effective, but who am I to judge? I didn't even take the program.

What DARE Did To Me

[vergil]

I had DARE in 7th grade. A police officer came into our classroom several times a week and lectured us about the perils of drug use.

I liked the guy, and I believed him. I won a DARE T-Shirt for writing the best anti-drug essay.

When I arrived at college, I had several lingering questions about drugs and the War upon them. I made a point to visit my school library's extensive collection of books on the subject and read just about every one. I discovered -- after reading first-hand accounts of dealers, chemists, psychologists, social workers and academic researchers -- that many of the sure-fire conclusions (like 'pot is bad b/c it is addictive') preached in DARE were highly inaccurate. I realized that DARE's logic was founded on the juvenile, rhetorical mantra that Drugs are Bad Because They Are Illegal. Drugs are Illegal Because They Are Bad.

For the first time in my life, it dawned upon me that if the government could blatantly tell lies to me under the pretext of "safety" and "education," the government could lie about other things.

I began to think critically about other government-supported "certainties." I began to question my government's motives, and found that many of its policies -- just like the War on Drugs -- were based on simple, hysterical jingoism.

I think drug education in public school is a positive thing. However, DARE is far from unbiased, informative drug education. DARE represents the intrusion of law enforcement and fundamentally unsound political policy into the American classroom.

Sincerely,
Vergil

Better to have drug education

[grytpype]

Rather than have some program where children are brainwashed into believing the drugwar establishment's position (however bogus it might be), I would prefer to see a drug education program, where teens are told the truth about drugs:

• People have always ingested materials that make them feel better or different, since before history began.
• Alcohol is one of the worst of them, in terms of what it does to your health and other unintended consequences.
• Tobacco also has potentially devestating long-temr health consequences.
• Marijuana is far safer than either alcohol or tobacco. No one -- and I mean no one -- has ever died from an overdose of marijuana. If it has long-term health effects, they are so subtle that their existence is still disputed after decades of study (compare with alcohol and tobacco!)
• Many people find that using marijuana, occasionally and in moderation, improves the quality of their lives.

No credibility

[Shotgun]

What we have here is a case where good people with good intentions have lost there credibility through hyperbole.

How did the model program reduce binge drinking? Through reality. It showed students that there was no need to drink yourself silly in an attempt to keep up.

How could DARE actually work? Through reality. Instead of saying 'pot kills', they should say that pot will reduce your performance. (I think they should still be allowed to say that CRACK and sniffing glue kills?)

The point is that people who are still trying to figure out how the world works are incredibly sensitive to hypocrisy, and they invariably reject it out of hand once it is found. A rejected hypocrit is not an authority, no matter whose uniform they are wearing. Iff DARE is to be effective, they must present the most solid research in the frankest manner possible.

Re:Offtopic?

[taliver]

News
Dare was founded in 1983. New it isn't. Complaints about it have been around sine then as well. Answer: No.

for Nerds
Windows? Linux? PDAs? Hardware? Science? Technology? Gnome? Gimp? While it may be interesting, being a nerd is not a prerequite to find interest. Answer: No

Stuff
Drugs are certainly stuff. Answer: Yes

that Matters
Does anybody think that this question, forum, or general discussion will change the drug policy of any school district? Answer: No

Conclusion: No, this is not in Slashdot's jurisdiction by design. However, if those that run the website want to post it, who am I to argue?

Re:Binge drinking and drunk driving

[el_chicano]

Four drinks you are still OK to drive. Five drinks you're a binge drinker. That must be one heck of a fifth drink.

Its probably a Long Island Iced Tea [student.com]! :->
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!

The Danger of the Deception

[sterno]

You bring up a good point. There is also a severe danger in categorizing any illegal drug as being the same as any other. Let's say the DARE team comes in and tells all these kids that Crack is bad and Marijuana will get you addicted the first time you use it. What happens?

Well, invariably, a few of the kids are going to try marijuana. They'll try it, probably like it, and find that they aren't addicted too it. So, they think that maybe the cops are full of it. So, then they try some other things, and soon enough they tread on to the ground of something that is dangerous and addictive.

What kids need is real honest information about the effects of the drugs. They should distinguish between drug use (the occasional drink with friends or a glass of wine with dinner) and drug abuse (binge drinking and full blown alcoholism).
Now, to the credit of these organizations like DARE, they are a branch of a government that has chose to enforce a completely irrational drug policy. They can't go into schools and tell kids the truth and that using drugs isn't wrong but that abusing drugs is. If they did that, the politicians would look like fools and liars, and we can't have that. So what they do tell them is what they have to tell them to keep them out of jail.

---

Continuation of a trend

[Private Essayist]

I found this story on the D.A.R.E. web site [dare.com], in their news section where they list success stories. In the section about kids and D.A.R.E, I found this excerpt:

"A 10-year-old Newport Beach, California girl named Amber escaped a would-be abductor near her home last weekend. Then, with TV cameras rolling, she credited the DARE officer at her school for teaching her what to do. You can bet hundreds of DARE police officers throughout the nation were whooping when they saw that...

"How well does it work? That's a crapshoot; we can never say for sure," said Lynne Bloomberg, who coordinates the DARE program for the Newport Mesa Unified School District. "But I'm wholeheartedly convinced it's worth doing." Just ask Amber. She'd just gotten off her bicycle to pick flower in her Eastbluff neighborhood when someone pulled up in a truck, opened the door and tried to grab her. Amber said she knew from her DARE officer not to get close enough that he could reach her and that she should scream and run like crazy to get away. "

Other than the humorous image of a bunch of cops "whooping" when they heard about Amber's actions (whooping ass? the imagination soars...), I found this story odd.

For one thing, note the logic error of the D.A.R.E. spokesperson when talking about whether or not D.A.R.E. works:

"...we can never say for sure. But I'm wholeheartedly convinced it's worth doing."

There you go! We can't say for sure, but I just did. What more proof do you need?

Secondly, what has this got to do with D.A.R.E? Dare to avoid sex offenders? Furthermore, why did Amber credit D.A.R.E for teaching her not to get into trucks with strange men? Didn't her parents provide this salient fact?

I find this to be part of the larger trend of people shirking personal responsibility. Parents should teach morality to their children, not outsiders in the school. Otherwise, whose morality gets taught? The morality that says weed is not as bad as crack and heroin? Or the morality that says all drugs are universally and equally bad, including that aspirin, you naughty boy! D.A.R.E has to choose one parent's morality and not the other. Predictably, of course, they chose the easy to remember, Claritin will lead to a life of depravity, level of morality.
________________

Re:You tell me

[pluteus_larva]

Your idea is absurd for several reasons.

One, it wouldn't work. Smuggling is easy when you have lots of money, which drug smugglers do. There is always an unprotected place (how much coastline does the U.S. have? how much of it is private property?) where it's possible to bring contraband into the country.

Two, it would be prohibitively expensive. We already spend way too much on the military in this country, and the kind of operation you describe would probably double or triple the military budget.

Three, it doesn't address the real problem. The war on drugs is misguided. Casual drug use isn't *really* a problem. Lots of successful, happy people smoke pot with no ill effects. Why make it illegal when it's not worse than cigarettes or alcohol? The problem with drugs is that people do get addicted and such abuse can ruin their lives. But this is a medical problem, not a law enforcement one.

Finally, it does nothing to address the unparalleled crime wave across this country the drug war has created. Think of all the violent crimes that occur as a result of the illicit drug trade. Has drug interdiction helped at all? Of course not. There are two ways to solve this. First, work seriously on eliminating poverty so that the motivation to get into selling drugs is gone, and second, decriminalize drugs so that the black market is no longer profitable.

--

my problems with dare

[bran880]

I agree: I'm twenty now, and never smoked weed or drank until I got to university. From my perspective (and from the perspective of my peers), the D.A.R.E. program and its cohorts represent an incredibly naive view of the drug situation. It tries to scare teenagers to adopt the silly view that alcohol and weed are as dangerous, or even more dangerous than crack, heroine or other obviously more illicit, nasty stuff.

Rather than try to establish simple moral reason and judgment in children, the DARE system propagandizes

• fear ("Don't want me to have to arrest do you?"),
• ignorance ("All of this stuff will kill you!"),
• and social ineptitude ("You shouldn't hang out with these 'bad' people!").

Until the program realises that preaching fear and lies doesn't work, it will continue to be a failure. In addition, sending out wanky cops to scare little kids ought to be a crime. Kids are already disillusioned enough.
If you want to read more about ONDCP corruption/craziness and their so-called "war on drugs" (and American culture!), you should comb through salon.com [salon.com]. They have published a number of insightful articles on the ONDCP over the past year.

DARE Made Me Comforable With Drugs

[waldoj]

My girlfriend and I were talking about the DARE programs that we were put through in middle school. She pointed something out that I found quite interesting: DARE made her quite comfortable with drugs, even curious about some of the more interesting ones. (ie, LSD.) Neither of have used drugs (we're straight edge, I guess), but I must admit that I'm in agreement with her -- I know just what I'd use, what to expect, and that I'd probably use them again. All thanks to DARE!

Waldo

Dementa? Stroke?

[sips]

On point 1c I think pure medical data seems to back it up fully. A stroke is where large portions of the brain die and cease to function. It's like scortched earth for the brain and many extremely intelligent people can be totally incapicated by them and almost never get any functioning back. If the brain were able to replace cells as you suggest then why don't stroke victims get they life back? Another point would be dementa and Alteizmers which are basically the result of mass dieing of cells over time. Why don't old people have the same level of intelligence and cognition as the general younger population of age -50 years? On 2 I think DARE is brought out of a desire to depart with the kind of ideas imparted by Ralph Parlette and his "School of Hard-Knocks" (take a look at project gutenberg for a reference). Most people don't want their children to be ruined for life and have an addiction problem because someone didn't tell them the experiences of other people who failed.

Re:D.A.R.E's notoriety: Some Evidence

[drben]

Here is a link [nofuncharlie.com] to some studies and articles on DARE programs; the evidence is pretty overwhelming that the programs are ineffective, and that DARE has used political pressure to squash legitimate criticism. DARE even funded a study in 1997 that concluded DARE was ineffective; instead of examining the conclusions, DARE chose to harass and attack the credibility of the researchers (whom they hired in the first place).

Re:Propaganda

[atrowe]

I agree that most of the material presented by the DARE program is biased propaganda, but distribuiting "actual information and letting the kids decide for themselves' would defeat the whole point of the program. If an officer were to stand in front of a classroom full of kids and tell them that marijuana is not physically addictive and in most respects is safer than alcohol, that would not serve the program's intended goal to stop youth from using drugs.

Drugs DON'T destroy lives-people destroy themselve

[vorpal22]

Argh... subject line didn't fit. You can fill in the "s".

Excuse me? Who are you (or the government, or anybody else, for that matter) to tell me what I should and should not be putting into my body?

I'll have you know that out of all the drugs, both legal and illegal, nicotine is the most addictive. People have problems with alcohol more than any other drug. Alcoholics are harder to treat than any other drug addict. Alcohol and nicotine cause more deaths per year than all illegal drugs combined.

I have been using drugs for five years. Out of all the drugs that I have used (18 different ones, many of them obscure, so I won't mention them here), the only one that I have had a problem with is alcohol. Luckily, I managed to quit drinking before it caused me irreparable harm. However, it was my perogative, and my responsibility in the issue.

Nowadays I use marijuana and nitrous oxide on a regular basis with no adverse effects. In fact, when used properly, these are two of the safest drugs you can do. These drugs bring me incredible benefit, both mentally and spiritually.

When you are ready to give up your caffeine (which is a drug, and a fairly addictive one at that), then feel free to tell me what I should and shouldn't put in my body. As far as I'm concerned, a caffeine addict is a drug addict; an individual who has let drugs take control of their lives. Have you ever seen a caffeine addict who was unable to have a cup of coffee? Well, I'm dating a caffeine addict now, and let me tell you that it isn't pretty.

Just because the majority is too lethargic and needs caffeine to stimulate themselves into productivity and the media glorifies the negative effects of other drugs, then people like me, who are high strung in nature, have the drugs that would be beneficial to us illegalized, while the caffeine / ephedrine addicts are free to use to their hearts' content.

Cocaine has been known to cause health problems and addictions in susceptible individuals. Marijuana does not. I'm sorry, but if your friends and family members had their lives "ruined" by marijuana, well then marijuana was probably indicative of a deeper problem (e.g. depression, anxiety, etc...) that ruined their lives.

Just say know to drugs. There is a wealth of information out there. Know how to use responsibly. People have been using drugs for thousands of years with great benefits.

If you choose to lead a sober life, I don't criticize you. That's the choice that you feel is right for you. But your post implies that drug users are "losers", which just shows that you are narrow minded. If you and your family and friends are unable to enjoy the wonderful things drugs have to offer, that's fine, but respect that some of us can.

For your info, I have a straight A+ average in my 3rd year of computer science. I have an IQ of 160. I am a well rounded individual who realizes that exercise, eating well, and moderation in all things are the keys to good health.

DARE made me never want to drugs... look at me now

[male]

DARE didn't work for me, but it isn't a failure.

I can remember elementary school, sitting in the school bus agreeing with my friends that we would never smoke cigarettes, and especially never do 'harder' drugs; because that's what DARE told us to think. Look at us now. Some of us still don't do cigarettes, but as we got older we found out the real consequences from drugs, the positive and the negative, and started taking the ones we wanted to.

The problem I see with DARE is it didn't really give us useful, truthful information about the drugs it tried to keep us away from. This is understandable too; when you are seven years old you don't care about the chemical effects of drugs. In fact all DARE could do was try and mold our minds into thinking that drugs are bad. They told us drugs would destroy our lives. They told us drugs would destroy our bodies.

As a teenager rules were made to be broken, and because I didn't really know anything useful about drugs I went out and tried them.

I don't think, however, that DARE is a failure considering their circumstances. Because most drugs cannot be tested in studies, they don't get the scientific attention they deserve. Even if DARE had all the information about the physical and social effects of drugs, I don't think you can really get that across to a seven year old. DARE should be implemented at a higher age. For my area, and this probably isn't consistent across the board, drug use began in middle school, about twelve years old. Oddly enough, that's the same time DARE fades away. We had zero DARE programs in high school.

As we get older, give us the truth and let us decide. If you decide for us, we will do the opposite. It's the teenage way.

Not at all

[Phexro]

dare is a complete joke. they spread their message through misinformation and lies. they want the kids to come out of the class as War On Drugs(tm) automatons, Just Saying No(tm).

if you're going to tell kids how bad drugs are, at least have the integrity to tell the whole story. at least have the balls to distinguish drug use from drug abuse. let them know that experimentation with e.g. marijuana is not uncommon, and you shouldn't consider every drug user a pathetic waste of flesh to be pitied.

if they really want to show kids how bad drugs can be, show some photos of people who got crispy-fried when their methlab blew up. show pictures of people going through such terrible herion withdrawl that they would rather die than live without a fix. show cops trying to restrain someone freaking out on pcp. don't lie.

for what it's worth, dare didn't do anything for me other than waste an hour of my time every week, when i could have been out back getting stoned.
--

My 3.14 bits

[fjordboy]

I think the proof of DARE's ineffectiveness lies in Slashdot's Moderaters. I DARE them to stop taking crack. :)

also..my post works whether it is moderated down or up, so there. :-P

One comedian's take on this

[locutus074]

I heard a comedian (I forget who, unfortunately) say, "Marijuana is what is known as a 'gateway drug'. This means that kids move on to harder drugs after trying it and finding out that it's not nearly as good as all the warnings against it would have them believe."

--

Young 'uns

[Skim123]

When the DARE officer came to talk to us, I was in fifth grade (10 years old). While I agree with your points, that not all drugs are evil voodoo drugs that must be avoided religiously, I do not know if kids that young can make a discernable difference between the two. Should we be giving kids a long list of what "OK" drugs are what "bad" drugs are? Kids, it's OK to try pot, but don't try crack. I dunno... I kind of liken it to telling young kids, "Hey, it's ok to have pre-marital oral sex, but not actual penetration." Once someone has gone as far as oral sex, vaginal sex ain't too far away.

Likewise, I would assume the percentage of crack or heroin users that have used pot as well is higher than the percentage of non-crack and non-heroin users. Now, I'm not saying pot unquestionably leads to harder drugs, but I don't think you want to give the youth the impression that some drugs (which might be used as stepping-stones to harder drugs) are ok.

Re:The problem with DARE

[rangek]

Marijuana is excellent and has no negative effects.

Surely, you're joking. While marijuana is not nearly as bad a say, heroin, or crack, it is definitely not good for you. The massive "tar" content of your average joint makes it at least as bad a a pack of filtered cigarettes. And smoking pot on a regular basis definitely decreases IQ and increases paranoia and depression.

Definitely, pot does not kill in the same sense as heroin and such, but no negative effects? Come on, get real.

The real problem

[kevlar]

The real problem as I see it, is that drug abuse and alchoholism are diseases that people have predispositions to. Combined with emotional and/or social problems (such as having an abusive parent) the predisposition may or may not take over your life.

Kids will always use drugs... what people need to be able to do is recognize who has a problem using them and who doesn't, as well as who will potentially have a problem.

One question I'd *love* to ask Al Gore or GW Bush

[locutus074]

"Would you be a better person today, if, for your 'youthful indiscretions', you'd spent ten years in jail?" [harrybrowne.org]

--

Right on!

[Anonymous Coward]

Once someone has gone as far as oral sex, vaginal sex ain't too far away.

You are completely correct. This is why we must recommend nasal sex as the only safe alternative.

not only doesn't it work it is mindless bs...

[MousePotato]

Look up the following (if you need more just reply and I will give you a ton): Frontline:busted..how effective is D.A.R.E [pbs.org]
War on Drugs Clock [drugsense.org]
Interesting Fact Sheet from canadian sources [mapinc.org] That should get you started on how and why D.A.R.E. does not work. The US prohibition against drugs in an incredible failure. In the first 12 years of the War on Drugs (begining with Reagan's presidency) the US Gov. spent a record 3 Trillion dollars. If you worked out the numbers that is about $12,000 for every man, woman and child in the US. I don't know about you but my feeling is that this is an incredible waste of money. I could think of agencies like NASA who I would rather see me $1,000 a year spent on rather than the bullshit we call a war on drugs. I can't find an exact figure for the model but last year the 6th largest growth industry in the US was Prisons according to a Frontline report I saw not too long ago. The War on Drugs as it is being waged is the most blatant racist violation of US citizens rights. The statistic of 3 out of 4 black males (between ages 17-34)in inner cities being incarcerated at one point or another for a drug offense should point that out. The distribution of drug use is not vastly different between any particular ethnic, racial or financial demographic yet we relentlessly persecute blacks for it. This is an utter disgrace. Caucasians do drugs too. I don't see 3 out of 4 of us in jail for it.If this were really a WAR then we would handle it completely different but we won't. It is always election fodder and makes the righteous candidates look foolish for saying truthfully that the war is dumb. Jocelyn Elders [surgeongeneral.gov] was ridiculed out of her position as Surgeon General for saying that the drug problem is a health problem not a criminal problem. The CIA was busted selling and marketing cocaine in 'Contragate' to help fund subversive actions during the Iran/Iraq war. The list goes on there I could continue to add to ad infinitum.People for the most part are opposed to legalization/decriminalization for all the wrong reasons based upon the disinformation you are presented with in the educational system. Could we please stop brainwashing the next generation and teach them the facts? How many of us were forced to watch Reefer Madness? How much of the 'facts' presented therein is totally bullshit? Will crime go UP if decriminaliztion occurs? No because a) you will kill the black market that feeds off of it b) drugs will be much cheaper c)the quality will be better d)street gangs who finance themselves on drug sales will be out of business e)we would stop letting violent offenders out of jail to house mandatory sentencing guidlined drug offenders and the rediculous 3 time offender laws that require people to be jailed the rest of thier lives for the sale or use f)the relentless seizure of properites would end. Drug use for the most part is a victimless crime.We have to stop this madness and soon. Cops needlessly are being killed. FBI agents bodies are turning up in graves in Mexico. Our Presidential candidates have used drugs: Gore [disinformation.com] and Bush [disinformation.com] links. I am totally for decriminalization and when I say that I mean clean across the board, not just pot or coke I mean EVERYTHING. What a person does in thier own home on thier own time is thier business. You do what you want. I care not. If you do drugs and get behind the wheel of a car we take away you liscense forever(something I totally advocate for DUI offenders to) end of story. The basic tenet of freedom is the right to be left alone and not be unduly harrassed. Why isn't it that way now?Please, Uncle Sam, stop blowing my hard earned tax dollars on the bullshit and stop trying to brainwash our children.

The real problem drug is

[WillAffleck]

Alcohol. Tobacco is the second gateway drug.

Think about it. Look around yourself, pay attention to who became druggies and who didn't. Chances are they were drinking or smoking at an early age.

Instead, we waste time targetting marijuana and demonizing it, spending more than 40 percent of our budgets (federal, state, county, municipal averaged) on arresting mostly harmless occassional marijuana and ecstasy users who never really cause problems, and thinking this will actually have an effect.

It won't.

Look, some members of my family made fortunes during prohibition. Drugs are drugs, heroin is stupid, cocaine/crack is also stupid, and meth is just plain dumb, but you can't stop people by lame programs that don't deal with the real gateway drugs, in a world where most underage teenagers have had a drink in the past month.

So, get real, take half the money we spend on crac king down on the drug supply and spend it on realistic prevention programs, and triage the enforcement process so we don't lock up soft drug users with hard time criminals and perpetuate the problem.

Re:The thing...

[HeghmoH]

While we're doing random drug tests, why don't we randomly search people's houses and cars and clothes for paraphernalia?

The only reason schools get away with drug searches etc. is because until you turn 18, you're effectively property, and property doesn't have quite as many rights as full-blown over-18 human beings. Think about it. If every person between the ages of, say, 28 and 32 were forced to go somewhere for several hours a day, and were forced to take drug tests or even have their stuff searched because they went there, people would pitch a fit. But because it's done to minors, people can get away with doing it.

Re:DARE is not propaganda

[logicnazi]

I have done a considerable amount of research on the brain damage topic so I will try to respond in an intelligent way.

Yes, some drugs do cause some brain imparment including alchool, pot, ecstasy ketamine and others. The question at hand is how much imparment. Various studies have also shown brain imparment from head butting soccer balls but I don't think we need a DARE program for soccer abuse.

Many studies, including ones founded by the WHO(World Health organization not Pete Townshed's band), have found less long term mental damage from smoking pot than imbibing alchool. In fact the long term damage from being an alcholic is actually fairly severe. Yet it is possible to occasionally have a drink and suffer no noticeable deliterious effects in ones life be a productive member of society and in fact be more happy overall. It would therefore seem alchol use is often a good thing. Also given the research into the harmful effects infrequent pot use seems like a good thing too.

Of course using any drug carries with it the possibilty of physical or psychological addiction. Alchool is in fact physically addictive while marijuanna is not. This doesn't mean one can't overuse the drug but does lend further credence that it should not be included in the DARE propaganda.

Other drugs can be quite damaging to the brain. For instance ecstasy is very hard on the serotonin system and use has been shown to correlate with imparment. On the other hand long term use of opiates (opium heroin etc...) has very little (if any) brain imparment although they are quite addictive. Drugs like LSD have not been conclusively shown to carry any cognitive imparment with them (several studies suggest that they have one imparment over another but at the same time these studies all disagree and oten work in a psuedo-uncontrolled enviornment which allows other drugs to affect the results) and while depresion and anxiety are also claimed as side effects I am unaware of any controlled study to this effect.

But now this is a quite differnt picture of drugs than painted in DARE. Some drugs can be quite hard on the brain (ecstasy and to a lesser extent alchol depending on the amount) while other "bad drugs" are sometimes not to bad on the brain or at least less harmful than our legal drug alchol. This then is why DARE is propaganda.

WHY IS THIS BAD?
Well because if we lie to children when we are telling them drugs are bad they are likely to take everything we tell them on the subject to be false. Once children find out that pot is not the demon weed and it isn't that bad for you they may stop believing ecstasy is that harmful or heroin is that addictive. Without any authoratative unbiased knowledge know they have to guess as what drugs are worth it and which are not.

In regards to prison most marijuanna users don't go to prison. The figure is now something like 55% or high school seniors have tried pot. Most of them aren't going to prison...they are growing up to be bankers and lawyers and politicians.

That 55% figure is a good response to the success of DARE. Another little factoid for you is that the government plays fast and loose with its figures sometimes switching the age of those they polled to make it look like their program has been more succesfull (Barry McCaffery just did this).

Just a note on your final point doing something because everyone else is doing it is not only what intelligent people do it is what everyone does. We wear clothes, don't go to work dressed in giant ape suits, eat with silverware etc..etc.. all because others are doing it. This sort of thing is only viewed as bad when in fact everyone else isn't doing it and you are merely following a small subset.

Re:Then explain why people appear to get lower sco

[logicnazi]

This is not surprising at all. I bet you will find similar effects from gambling, shoplifting and other "bad" activities. Yet we would not claim that shop lifting is a nuerotoxin. What you in fact have is a correlation not a causation.

To rebute your claims I suggest you look at the two followign studies.

Goode, E "Drug Use and Grades in College," Nature 234: 225-27

Kupfer, DJ et al "A Comment on the Amotivational Syndrome in Marihuana Smokers," American Journal of Psychiatry 130:1219-22

Both of which find that college smokers don't do worse than non-smokers (the first actually finds them doing better).

In regards to high school students I suggest that in general choice to do un-approved activities like drug use often correlate with feelings of disenfrachisment and possibly depression. With these feelings being the cause of both the drug use and the poorer performance.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

95%? Wrong.

[NuclearArchaeologist]

Just from my personal experience with DARE and the health classes in my school, the basic effect is: 10% recognize the dangerous effects. 50% don't aren't swayed either way. 40% realize that the teachers, parents, and police don't want them to be drinking and smoking, so they have added incentive to do it. And of the 10% that recognized the dangerous effects, I'd say at least half do it anyways.

So, you think 95% of your peers will be using some form of illegal substance? The Harvard study about perceptions of what constitutes "normal" show that that missconceptions of this kind are what leads to the kinds of behavior you are talking about. If you belive that, it will become 100% true to the one person who's opinions you should really care about.

There is nothing normal or casual about illegal drugs. You don't know what's there, even if you think you know what it will do to you.

Wake up! You don't need that kind of crap to have a good time. You can run around naked without having consumed a buch of shit someone wants to sell you. I have! and I've got pictures on campus and at the State Capitol to prove it. I did it stone cold sober with a couple of friends, one of which became my wife. Passed out = lost opertunity. Recreationally hanging out with your buds watching Batman on TV every afternoon will waste your youth. Don't be a sucker for the liquor industry or the Global Drug Suppliers. The time of your life will come because you are young, energetic and learning with your friends.

Poster enjoys alcohol, but has never gotten a DWI because he does not drink and drive (duh!). Sleep in your car! Plan your evenings. Walk! Don't drink so damn much. Never, ever waste time with illegal drugs. New Orleans is a good place to grow up, and yes I had a great time growing up. In fact, I'm still having a great time.

Go places, do things, and be sweet!

Re:DARE is not propaganda

[logicnazi]

1c is not a myth. I am not quite up with what functions your new brains cells may take up (their was some question about whether any type of cell in the brain may be replaced) and I do know that often the damage caused by repeted drug use may get partially better with time. However various studies do clearly show imparment from say ecstasy and serious damage from PCP. I believe in the later case it can be directly linked to cell death.

DARE is fundamentally flawed

[h0mee]

DARE has many fundamental problems with it which are inextricably linked with the moronic attitude of the drug war.

The first is that "drugs" is ill-defined and is equated with the irrational schedule policies of the DEA/FDA. Everything you ingest is a drug. Every lipid, amino acid, carbohydrate, tryptamine, amphetamine, etc. etc. all have effects on your body and your brain- whether it be LSD or L-Tyrosine. To promote a healthy attitude in the populace, one needs to show the reality of cause and effect of everything you ingest. It is hypocritical of schools to be having anti-marijuana campaigns through DARE when such things are funded by PepsiCola or Mcdonalds- just as if not more deleterious to one's body as some "hard" drugs. Don't beleive me? Check out the increasing rates of hypoglycemia and diabetes among the youth generation, and compare that with the rates of, say, methamphetamine addiction (you'll find the former is much higher). The rational approach is a holistic approach- advocating the ability to regain bio and mental homeostasis even after extreme conditions (stress, drugs, lack of exercise)- which leaves the decision in the hands of well-informed youth, and not in horribly misinformed disempowered generation.

That said, there are positive effects to many illicit substances- enhancements in creativity, insight in self, stress relief, etc. Just like there are positive effects to eating a fatty and heavy meal, or taking medication to treat a disease. Ideally, one can avoid doing all of the above. Practically, its not going to happen- and teaching strategies for one to effectively using a state of homeostasis (sobriety) to get through life is critical, and is severly lacking in our bass-ackwards society.

The second problem is not only is a bad philosophy being taught, but misinformation is freewheelingly handed out, which not only destroys the credibility of the program, but also endangers the lives of many youth who may not have access to reliable information when drugs come their way. Yes, methamphetamine and heroin are not good- Ive had many a friends have their lives disrupted by it. On the same token, marijuana and and LSD dont kill- Ive taken them and am probably much more of a productive member of society than most, regardless. The harm prevention comes down to situations like: "When I am in a club scene, how much water should I drink, and what activity level should I have to prevent injury?" or "What dosages can cocaine have addictive effects?". Thanks to not having full factual disclosure, DARE has resulted not in the decline of drugs, but rather, the irresponsible use of drugs. In fact, I would go so far to say that the advent of the internet and sites like hyperreal [hyperreal.com], erowid [erowid.org] and groups like rec.drugs have saved tens of thousands of lives in drug situations thanks to factual accounts.

The third problem, is by introducing police (and other legal strongarm elements in to the situation), DARE has created an antagonistic relationship with legal system and the youth right off. Youth immediately become part of a criminal class- a class which is suspect of being "bad" under any circumstances. At best, As everyone in the 10-25 age group knows, this mentality has blossomed into the "crucify the different" mentality with all the anti-geek, anti-punk, etc. crusades occuring after Columbine regardless of the productivity or general goodness of the kids involved (its a total lack of philosophy, thinking, and humanity on the part of the administrations). At worst, kids who may have bad lives and chemical dependency problems are physically abused, tortured, and shipped off to the gulag, where they descend further and further into complete alienation from the positive aspects of society. The police involvement in the DARE program in it's current use makes police into nothing more than at best a gestapo, and at worst into just another really violent gang of thugs, given license to brutality by society. What happened to "officer friendly"? If you are going to have legeal intervention, it should be for the positive, and not by blindly treating all kids who use drugs, or happen to associate with a particular group as cockroaches- needing to be wiped out from society.

All of what I say is coming from growing up in the American Public School system in the time of the drug war, and having been in all sorts of different social roles (as math/computer whiz kid, a disgruntled political student, an illicit substance user, teacher's pet, etc. etc.). My suggestion for DARE managers, and people who want to stop seeing substance abuse is to Stop the Madness- stop buying the bullshit about crime and drugs. Stop thinking of drugs as an evil force. Stop thinking of black and white. Realize that substance ingestment is a lifestyle and health issue- a holistic issue that cannot and should not be treated as something that is an ethical or moral issue, any more than the decision to be a couch potato or having promiscous sex. It is an issue that cannot be improved without realizing that drug use and drug abuse is inevitable within a population, and what needs to be aimed for is harm reduction through rational, factual information!

Of course, I'm probably typing all of this for naught, since the blindness of the legislation and the brutality of the uneducated folks working in the educationa and police systems right now, refuse to even recognize the existence of the content of what I am saying, much less consider a different approach.

..."Here Kids- here's a free voucher for a Big Mac and Coke since you've sat here listening to us preach for the past hour."... Yeah, great policy (*sarcasm intended*)

Re:Smoking is a foolish thing

[logicnazi]

Does your drug dealer care about you? No, but neither does any representitive of corporate american trying to sell you anything (including McDonalds). Moreover pot dealers, not having sneaky advertisments on television billboards or what have you, may be significantly less manipulative than the corporate worlds. Moreover presumably the people who smoke are gaining something, the joy they experience from smoking.

Now I tend to agree use in early adolesence is usually not based on rational decscion making and it may be worse for you to smoke at that age but that is not to deny the possibility for some people to use it in a rational manner e.g. Carl Sagan

Re:Follow the acronym

[logicnazi]

Technically what he said was true. He was defining Abuse as the point of use where serious negatives start to accrue to you. This of course qould imply that their is a level of pot (or whatever drug) use which is not in fact abuse and therefore does not need to be stoped. I don't know if this is what he meant.

Having said this your point is well made. The primary problem with DARE is that through bad science/ancedots it tries to convince you all drug use is terribly bad therefore once you realize this isn't quite true the rest of the data they gave you is doubted

Re:You tell me

[bnenning]

Just on the off chance you're not a troll...

Result of rape: victim whose rights were violated.
Result of murder: dead victim whose rights were violated.
Result of smoking a joint: spaced-out non-victim with nobody's rights violated.

See the difference?

DARE Should Be Discontinued

[Yardley]

DARE Should Be Discontinued [smokedot.org]

The War on Drugs and DARE are failures [smokedot.org]

Reality Check Due In Drug Prevention [mapinc.org]
The New York Times
By Richard Rothstein

September 27, 2000 - Drug use by our youth is a problem that cries out for commitment, diligence, and honesty by school administrators and elected officials. Instead, for far too long, our drug-prevention policies have been driven by mindless adherence to a wasteful, ineffective, feel-good program, Drug Abuse Resistance Education DARE. DARE has been a huge public-relations success, but a failure at accomplishing the goal of long-term drug-abuse prevention.

Before taxpayers' money is spent for drug prevention, any program receiving the funds should prove its worth.

Our school administrators and elected leaders should insist on no less. However, with DARE, the moneyas well as the crucial opportunities to implement programs that actually workhas been blown.

In a recent guest column appearing in this newspaper, Glenn Levant, the president of DARE America, stated that "DARE has become the most successful drug abuse and violence reduction program in the nation..." He is accurate, but only if "success" is based on the amount of tax and foundation money spent on a program or the number of schools that have used the program.

However, if "success" is based on the effectiveness of a program in reaching the goal of reduced drug abuse over the long-term, DARE has been a dismal failure, according to numerous published studies.

In a Kokomo, Ind., study, researchers found that the level of drug use among DARE graduates was almost identical to the usage among non-DARE students. The only statistically meaningful difference was that more DARE students reported recent use of marijuana than those who had not been through the DARE program.

The Department of Justice commissioned the Research Triangle Institute RTI to evaluate DARE. Its published findings reflect that DARE students use more marijuana than non-DARE students.

The RTI concluded that DARE's core-curriculum effect on the use of other drugs, except tobacco, is not statistically significant. According to the RTI, DARE might very well be taking the place of other, more beneficial, drug-prevention programs that adolescents otherwise could be receiving.

When the City of Oakland decided to dump DARE after spending more than 600,000 per year, the director of Oakland's Family Council on Drug Awareness noted, "The bottom line is that DARE is an expensive program that seems to be making the situation worse."

In the longest follow-up study conducted regarding the effectiveness of DARE, the results of which were published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, the researchers noted that "[t]he widespread popularity of DARE is especially noteworthy, given the lack of evidence for its efficacy." They repeated the findings of many other researchers: "[T]he preponderance of evidence suggests that DARE has no long-term effect on drug use."

After it became apparent I was going to terminate Salt Lake City's involvement in the DARE program, several people came to complain at the City Council meeting on July 11. Among them were the director of DARE for the state of Utah, officers of the Utah Council for Crime Prevention, several DARE officers, and a member of the Salt Lake City School Board. Although they all spoke passionately for the continuation of DARE, not one of them made reference to any research published in a peer-reviewed journal demonstrating the effectiveness of DARE. In fact, the Salt Lake City school board member said she was "appalled" because I provided my research to the school board, yet she failed to mention any research to support her apparently intuitive notion that DARE accomplishes its objective.

Drug prevention is too important to be left to those who refuse to become familiar with the research -- or with the availability of other programs that have been proved to work. The DARE program, and those who have advocated it to the exclusion of effective programs, should be held accountable to the public.

Most important, our community should demand that our schools replace DARE with research-based programs that will help us attain our goal of significantly reduced drug abuse among our youth.

Among those programs are Life Skills Training LST, Students Taught Awareness and Resistance STAR, and Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids ATLAS. I have provided information concerning these programs and their effectiveness to the Salt Lake City school board.

Our common goal is to cut drug abuse among our youth.

A means of helping to accomplish that goal is to implement in our schools drug-prevention programs that actually work. Those who fail to insist on effective drug-prevention programs in our schools are betraying our youth and our community.

And those who are unfamiliar with the research and insist on retaining DARE in our schools simply because it is a "popular" program are not part of the drug-abuse solution; they are part of the problem.

--

Re:95%? Wrong.

[Jason W]

I didn't say 95% of my peers use drugs. Note that I said 50% aren't swayed either way by health class or DARE. So those 50% are up for grabs, and they decide based mostly on family morals, peer pressure, and, well, their personality.

And in my state they had/have a state-wide program that claims "7 out of 10 teens are tobacco free". PLEASE! The people they're spreading this too are mostly in high school. We /know/ how many of us use tobacco, and we know its more than 3 out of 10. You can lie to the grade school kids, but eventually they'll figure the truth out as well, just like we did.

As for the actually percentage, I don't know it for a fact. But I'd say at least 85% have tried it, and at least 60% use do it regularly. It depends on what 'it' is of course. Sadly, alcohol and marijuna have about the same percentage of experimentation, but alcohol has the much higher percentage of usage.

And I agree with you that you can have a good time without something in you, and I personally don't drink or use drugs. But you can't have teachers and police being totalitarian about it, and saying that any use at all is terrible, and you're a terrible person if you drink or try drugs. Let's take a realistic approach. Let the teachers tell about how they got smashed a few times and it didn't help them. But also let them tell about the teacher's party the other night, where almost everyone drank, but it was ok because they thought ahead and had a designated driver, and they didn't have to go to work the next morning. That's what would help students, not this DARE crap.

Re:Propiganda

[drenehtsral]

The reason DARE and other campaigns like it (i was the last year of my school to get teh Reagan anti-drug campaign before DARE was instated... Lots of old yellowed filmstrips of burnout kids, etc...)
Now, i think the problem with campaigns like that is they often come off as propiganda. I for one was interrested to go and do drugs because i wanted to see what all the stink was about. At first I was afraid, which was the desired effect, but after a while i just became curious (like many youth tend to be).
When I was in high school, my friends and i did a whole wide range of drugs just for the hell of it, and it was a shitload of fun, but eventually we grew out of it, and learned to use more moderation, and ended up all having enough responsibilities in the real world that there wasn't enough time to goof off like that any more, but we sure had fun doing it. I think we all viewed the anti-drug campaigns as something irrelivant to plow through, just like the simplified versions of history they teach kids to keep them from being emotionally disturbed, and all that other sort of stuff.
I think the DARE campaign works well for the kids who would use drugs due to peer pressure, which is a good thing, because these people would be doing it for the wrong reason, and without knowing what they are getting into.
The people who did their research first, then did it for fun or experementation will do it no matter what you do to stop them, and they are probably the least likely to be harmed by it, so i guess after all it works okay, because it keeps the people more likely to be hurt out of it, and everybody else can do drugs if they want....

Why D.A.R.E. doesn't work, and why it won't change

[U1ysses]

Being a graduate of D.A.R.E., I feel I have a little something to say about it. Many of the comments I have read here seem to say that D.A.R.E. is nothing more than government propaganda to keep Our Nation's Children from becoming addicted to marijuana and other illegal mind-altering and mood-enhancing substances. And for many reasons, I hold the same view. Much of what is taught in the D.A.R.E. program concerning the softer drugs (i.e. marijuana, LSD, and MDMA or 'ecstasy') is almost completely baseless propaganda. The instructors hired by this program first tell horror stories of smack-junkies, crackheads, and other users who spend a large portion of their lives and money supporting habits that they can't control. (Note that these are drugs of the harder variety, whose use can easily become physically addicting.) The instructor then places the softer, non-habit forming drugs in the same category, essentially creating a singular negative idea of 'drugs' in the minds of the children.

The problem with this is that:

1. The horror stories are representative of a small portion of the population that uses drugs, and, concerning the softer drugs,
2. It is baseless propaganda

These same children who graduated D.A.R.E. are going to grow up and see that in the Real World very few people live a life controlled by drugs.

This, in its own way, is not a good thing. Many of my friends who did graduate D.A.R.E. and became potsmokers and acidtrippers and rollers know just enough about the chemicals they put in their bodies to believe that, instead of being completely and utterly detrimental to their entire life, these drugs are almost completely safe.
So while they now know that marijuana is non-habit forming, they may not know that those who smoke risk a greater chance of neck and throat cancer, along with everything that smoking a cigarette might cause (although since many potsmokers smoke much less marijuana than cigarette smokers, they don't stand as high a risk).
While LSD is practically impossible to overdose on (as is marijuana), and in its pure form does not cause nerve damage, it can cause psychological damage in those who are not prepared for it (i.e. taking a much larger dose than they are mentally capable of handling).
MDMA, or ecstasy, is quite probably linked with minor to significant nerve damage, as well as forms of depression in heavy users.

The problem is not just in the way the D.A.R.E. instructor groups all drugs into one category. It is also the drug laws that persist in the United States. The instructor can't rightly say to a room of fourthgraders that marijuana and LSD have little to no eventual consequences and then reaffirm that they are illegal. The D.A.R.E. program is just a proponent of the U.S.'s draconian antidrug laws.

For the D.A.R.E. program to be viable, it must first be truthfully informative. If children were to get viable and honest information on the various substances out there, as well as methods of using them responibly, drug use may go up, but I believe that hard drug use will go down. But for the D.A.R.E. program to teach children honest information about the drugs out there, the ill-informed and unjust drug laws in the United States would have to be overturned. And that is something I (regrettably) don't see happening anytime soon.

For an extensive database on the different drugs out there, try lycaeum.org [lycaeum.org] and erowid.org [erowid.org]. Both are highly informative and lycaeum.org [lycaeum.org] contains the largest trip report database on the web.

Re:DARE is not propaganda

[ToiletDuk]

I think people take those studies that say marijuana is less damaging that alcohol, and interpret it to mean that marijuana is not damaging at all. Of course, if you smoke pot every day for years and years like many people I know, it's going to do something detrimental to your health. scratching your fingernail across your arm isn't immediately harmful, but do it once every second for an entire day,and you'll have an open wound on your arm. I have no problem with pot use as a recreational activity, like camping. One weekend, instead of saying "let's go camping" say "let's smoke up" and leave it at that. but when it becomes a daily habit, it's damaging. Both to your health and your lifestyle. Dependencies of any kind on physical substances are bad.

• _____
• 
  ToiletDuk (58% Slashdot Pure)

Re:You tell me

[apropos]

drsoran wrote a satirical comment: "I agree. I think we need to also legalize murder and rape. [...] God Bless America." I believe (s)he is trying to point out that if we are going to legalize drug use, we might as well legalize murder and rape. I am responding both to drsoran and those with the general attitude that drug use or abuse should be illegal.

My response:

It is sad indeed when the issue is so confused that the idea of harming another person gets mixed up with the right to privacy. These are distinct and separate issues.

I hold these two truths to be self-evident: It is never right to harm someone against their wishes, and it is never right to tell someone what they can and can't do if it has no effect on anyone else.

And it harm none, so let it be.

You can argue all you want that "drug use has social consequences" and you would be right that it does. But mostly because you make it that way. No matter what you say, it is possible for someone to use mind or mood altering chemicals without bothering anybody else. And you have zero moral grounds to stand on trying to stop them.

This all boils down to the neighborly christian attitude that that the "pious" (my very favorite epithet) have every right to tell the "non-pious" how to live their lives. This gentle and loving commentary on my life should, of course, have the full force and weight of law behind it. Because god's laws are higher than man's.

I love the fact that christians don't feel god is judging and damning nearly enough, so they gleefully step in to help him out. "Hey, god! You're slacking off here, my neighbors are having oral sex. If you're not gonna stop it, well I'm calling the cops. No? Well, screw you, god!"

If the elderly had the right to end their lives in dignity, would end-of-life issues be so difficult? Would you rather allow your parents a going away party and a "special drink" or would you rather keep them weak and bed-ridden for ten years against their wishes? Because no matter how much pain you are causing the people you love most, you are doing what you consider "the Right Thing".

(I chose that example because it compares both issues of harming others and a right to privacy. It shows that sometimes you have to do something that doesn't sound right at all to really do the right thing.)

And if you think god's laws are higher than man's, who really wrote those laws? And is hearsay enough evidence to destroy our society? Personally, I don't think so.

DARE wants to imprison a teenager for 30 years

[defile]

A hacker by the name of Coolio defaced D.A.R.E's web page http://www.dare.org/ in protest of their efforts and programs.

The defacement can be viewed at http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/1999/11/ 14/www.dare.com/

He admitted to it a few weeks later after the FBI raided his house and confiscated his computers. They're charging the (then 17) teen as an adult who can face up to 30 years imprisonment (15 years per 2 counts, which is what he's actually being charged with) and $18,000 in fines. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/9701. html

Now, I don't use drugs. I don't care about using drugs. But I know what fucked up is. This is going too far. Legislation is being pushed to make it illegal to even write about illegal drug use.

Military wants no part of it

[coyote-san]

I'm hoping this article was a troll, but in case it's not....

The US Military wants no part of the drug war. It's one thing to defend the US coast and borders from military attack, but what you're describing is the wholesale conversion of the US Military into a domestic police force.

History teaches that this is usually soon followed by a military coup. In fact, a well-received essay (which I haven't read, unfortunately) by a senior officer described exactly how the chain of events seen in other countries could lead to a US Military Junta in the early twenty-teens. (I believe he used 2012 in his essay.)

Even if American human nature really is different (ha!) and nobody anywhere within or without the US Military is ever tempted to lead a coup, there's the profound difference between the actions of military and police forces. The military uses whatever force is necessary to counter a threat. Normally, the fastest and most efficient way to do that is to blow the other guy away before he does the same to you. The police (LA SWAT team tactics notwithstanding) is expected to use the minimal amount of force necessary. Suspects are allowed to escape, if capture poses too much risk to others. In physical confrontations, police are injured at nearly twice the rate as suspects. Suspects civil rights must be observed throughout arrest and detention. All of this is completely contrary to the training required of military personnel. (Remember, they are solving a very different problem. Different problem, different strategy, different tools.)

And the specifics of your proposal are ludicrous. Do you have any idea how much totally innocent cross-border traffic there is? Did you understand all of the quirks of the border? (E.g., school children living in Pt. Roberts, Washington, ride a school bus into Canada, then back into the US to attend school. Close the border and you'll have to arrange ferry service. Hell, you'll have to build the harbor facilities for the ferry!) Do you realize that much of the US-Canadian border is no more than a ditch between subdivisions? Do you realize how much of the border is wild forest unmarked except for a narrow band of downed trees?

(And what will you do about Alaska? Will you insist that all domestic flights from Alaska go through customs, or will you station troops along those thousands of miles of border?

How, precisely, will sealed borders reduce the domestic production of various drugs? Some drugs are imported, but marijuana is one of the top-five cash crops in many states. Meth labs cause urban hazmat teams endless hassles. E, LSD, and countless other drugs can be synthesized anywhere you have access to the chemicals. Are you going to send troops with all shipments of antihistamines? Armed guards in every grocery and drug store?

And what, pray tell, does "send them back where they came from" mean when you're talking about a US National reentering the country? In the same what "home is where they can't turn you away," one of the rights of US citizenship is that we *can't* be deported from this country, or refused entry. (We might be arrested and detained, but we can't be forced to another country. Contrawise, no other country can be forced to accept us.) A nearby INS lockup is holding some individuals who have no citizenship (they were stripped of Vietnamese citizenship after the war, and don't consider it home anyway since they left as infants, but never acquired US citizenship and are now disqualified due to felony convictions). Since no country will accept them, and no country can be forced to take them, they are languishing in prison indefinitely.

My Local Schools Dropping DARE

[BeBoxer]

I knew I had read that some local schools were dropping DARE. I don't know any details of the new program, and I'm not going to pay for the full article, but the intro has a nice summary. Oh, this is in Colorado in case you couldn't guess.

Article 26 of 33, Article ID: 0000226063
Published on 07/02/2000, DAILY CAMERA

COUNTY POLICE DROP DARE

BROOMFIELD POLICE ARE THE LATEST TO SWITCH DRUG EDUCATION
APPROACH

The end of the DARE program in Broomfield marks the slow demise of the once-popular drug education
curriculum throughout Boulder County.

The Broomfield Police Department recently scrapped DARE, which stands for Drug Abuse Resistance
Education, and replaced it with a program that covers a variety of topics, including bullying and underage
drinking. By doing so, Broomfield joined other municipalities in the area __ including Boulder, Louisville,
Nederland and Longmont __ that now use local schoo

Your search terms appear 12 times in this article.

Complete Article, 474 words ( 1.95 )

Re:Young 'uns

[GypC]

I don't think you want to give the youth the impression that some drugs (which might be used as stepping-stones to harder drugs) are ok.

They are already given that impression by the fact that alcohol is legal. And alcohol abuse is a much nastier vice than pot, a fact that is readily apparent to any teenager who knows alcoholics and pot-heads.

"Free your mind and your ass will follow"

Re:DARE Should Be Discontinued

[Yardley]

Oops, accidently posted the Salt Lake City newspaper article. Here's what you want to read:

REALITY CHECK IS OVERDUE IN PREVENTING DRUG ABUSE

AL GORE admits and George W. Bush implies youthful drug use. So should schools adopt a "do as I say, not as I do" drug curriculum, or seek another approach?

Drugs are dangerous, especially for youths whose families, peers or neighborhoods do not create pressure for responsible choices. And drugs are illegal.

But many successful adults used drugs casually. And experimentation by adolescents, most of whom still turn out O.K., continues. The 1990's saw teenage drug use grow while crime by youths declined.

Effective drug education is needed, but most programs exaggerate dangers and condemn use so harshly that youths who fail at total abstinence are not helped. This approach may not work.

Some efforts to reduce teenage drinking or early sex seem smarter. Underage drinking is illegal but colleges and a few high schools have "safe ride" programs with "no questions asked." It is contradictory to offer trips home from alcoholic parties and tell teenagers not to drink, but the mixed message can save lives.

Likewise, health teachers urge sexual abstinence, yet some high schools also distribute condoms. Delay sex, they say, but if you go ahead, be safe. When AIDS seems to threaten, consistency is a lower priority.

But "just say no" dominates drug education. A common program is DARE Drug Abuse Resistance Education, used in two-thirds of all districts at a cost of nearly 1 billion. DARE is taught by police officers, mostly in the fifth and sixth grades. The White House drug policy director, Barry R. McCaffrey, calls it "the premier drug prevention program."

Yet researchers find it does not work. DARE gets children to parrot responses about how terrible drugs are, but they then apparently use drugs at the same rate as non- DARE students. Some evidence suggests that DARE-trained adolescents use drugs even more.

Critics worry that DARE uses such exaggeration that once children realize they were misled, they may discount even true messages. The DARE workbook says marijuana users "are slow, are dull, have little ambition." But 10-year-olds know of older siblings, parents, even presidents, who used it without becoming dull or ambitionless. Children must then choose between DARE and their own observations. DARE is unlikely to prevail.

Other official warnings are also troubling. Advertising sponsored by Mr. McCaffrey's office tells children, if you use marijuana "it will kill your mother." Official "tips" urge parents to say, "If you took drugs it would break my heart."

Parents should think twice before heeding such advice. Although parents do not want children to try drugs, half of all teenagers do. Parents should insist that children have safe places to go with friends and that they know not to drive when "high." But threats of parental suicide and heartbreak may lead to secret experimentation in risky settings or with friends that parents neither know nor approve.

Official policy is puzzling because "just say no" has a long history of failure. Before Prohibition, schools exaggerated alcohol's dangers. A textbook said that in adult beer drinkers, "a slight cold brings on a fatal pneumonia." Children who saw parents drink beer and survive colds then ignored other temperance messages.

A 1930's Bureau of Narcotics campaign warned that marijuana would cause teenagers to commit vicious crimes. The bureau promoted a 1936 commercial film, "Tell Your Children," warning that marijuana caused teenagers to rape, murder and commit suicide. The film's claims were so excessive that it was later rereleased as a satire and shown widely on college campuses, now titled "Reefer Madness."

In 1991, the General Accounting Office found no evidence that "just say no" teaching was more effective in reducing drug use than programs that recognized teenage behavior but tried to limit it.

Some curriculums may be more effective than DARE. Teachers can give realistic information about the harm drugs do, and integrate health with other lessons. But no programs have yet navigated the problem of how to counsel against drugs while also supporting youths who ignore the advice.

Mayor Ross Anderson of Salt Lake City recently prohibited his police force from taking part in DARE work. Schools should not "moralize and exaggerate, but provide students with the basis for making decisions to avoid drugs," he said.

Salt Lake City is not the only city to reconsider DARE. But in most places, this ineffective and costly program still holds sway.

--

How Dare killed me.

[interstellar_donkey]

I went to the DARE class. Teacher said all drugs are bad and will kill me. The police man came in and said drugs will kill me.

Then I went to party and they were all smoking the weed. I asked them about the weed and they said it was fun and I should try some. I said 'No', that's peer pressure and I want none of it. They looked at me funny then said 'Oh well, more for us'.

The next day all the kids who were smoking the weed were at school. Even the smart ones. It was test day and I was nervous. All the kids who were smoking the weed didn't seem as nervous. They all got A's. I got a D.

I asked teacher again about the Weed. She said weed is bad and will kill me and if I smoke the weed I'm going to die. I told her that lots of the other kids at the school smoke the weed, and they seem alive and OK. "NO" Teacher said. "All of them are bad."

The next week I was at another party and decided teacher must be wrong since all the kids are having fun, so I smoked the weed too. Boy! It was fun. It felt so good, and the Pink Floyd really made sense. When I went home I thought 'I'm going to die now'.

The next day, I woke up feeling good. Great. At the school Teacher said drugs hook you for good and you can never stop taking them and if you try it hurts bad.

I didn't want to hurt bad, so I asked my friend who had the weed if I could have some more so I didn't hurt. He said he didn't have any so we went and saw a movie. I didn't hurt at all. I went three weeks with none of the weed, and I felt normal.

Then out on the playground there was a guy selling the crack. I saved up my lunch money for the crack. But before I did it I'd better ask Teacher. I asked 'Whats the difference between the weed and the crack'? Teacher said there was no difference. The weed and the crack are bad just the same.

So I smoked the crack, because the weed was not bad for me, so I figured the crack was not bad for me. Boy, teacher was right. Now I needed the crack and if I didn't get the crack it hurt bad.

I ODed and I died. If only I listened to DARE.

Case in point.

[Ex Machina]

I won the DARE essay contest in my class. I now have a water bong right next to me. Drugs make me smarter.

Re:Young 'uns

[zCyl]

> Should we be giving kids a long list of what "OK" drugs are what "bad" drugs are?

We ALREADY do this, it's just rather arbitrary. Don't do pot, it numbs you! Awww, have a headache? Here, take this Tylenol, have an Advil. Oh, you can't behave in class? Maybe we need to put you on Ridilin, yeah, it's in your best interest. No, don't drink, alcohol is evil! It changes your behavior.

Think about it. What's a gateway to what? Why are some drugs "bad" and some drugs "good"? All that really exists is a set of truthful cause:effects. Drug A causes effect B on your body. In most environments, children can get access to anything they want access to, so they're going to need to know factually what drugs cause what effects if they're ever going to learn how to make responsible decisions as adults.

thoughts

[MassacrE]

First - chances are if you are too outright critical of D.A.R.E, your article will be censored.

Second, I think the entire War on Drugs has been a failure in the worst way, but especially 'education' programs like D.A.R.E. Why? They don't educate, they preach fear. "Don't Do Drugs" - rather than teach the harms of drugs, perhaps giving examples - perhaps even finding people who have been through rehab to come in and talk, they preach fear, just a blanket of "Don't Do Drugs".

At least *I* never received any actual facts about drug usage, side effects, anything. Just that they were 'bad', or even sometimes 'uncool' (laughable, my teacher telling me what is hip).

The reason I find this hilarious is that the commercials nowdays urge parents to tell their kids about the harms of drugs, and guess what - I DON'T KNOW. I know that someone told me they were bad, preached it day after day, because that was part of their job. People do the same thing in bleach commercials on television, but at least *there* they offer something better.

So I say, if you want to make this program effective, really *Educate* people. Bring in ex-herion and cocaine addicts, ones that can talk better than Crackhead Bob, and have them educate the students. As a plus, you can pick from many Major League Baseball players. You will probably not find any ex-marijuana addicts, but hey, maybe you can keep people away from the really heavy and aweful drugs like speed and herion.

But don't ask me to educate my kids, because all I have to give to them is fear and slogans, and I won't do it (when I have kids).

Ineffective DARE experience

[KFury]

The only contact I had with DARE was in 4th grade. We had an assembly hosted by a police officer and the main thing I learned and took away from the assembly was that police officers don't prosecute drug users, they prosecute drug pushers and sellers.

As it turned out, I grew into a person who doesn't use drugs and seldom drinks, but after that assembly I wasn't as scared of the legal implications of using drugs as I was before.

On the other side of the coin, DARE might as well be called SCARE by the lack of education on exactly how 'bad' specific drugs are relative to one another. If they were honest, they'd be warning on the dangers of drinking (instead of just drinking and driving) in a louder voice than they cry the dangers of casual marijuana use.

Kevin Fox

The only effective solution: Narcosalas

[Drashcan]

Although I am not from Spain I think the best "solution" to the hard drugs problem until today are the Spanish Narcosalas.

As far as I have understood from a BBC interview, the filosophy behind this unique experiment in Madrid is simple: in a democratic, tolerant society you cannot force a hard drug addict to kick off just like you cannot force someone to think.

And hard drug addicts are beside inflicting harm on themselves mainly a problem because they steal or commit other criminal activities to finance their addiction.
Besides this hard junkies sometimes also become violent as a reaction on their shot (think about Jimmy Hendrickx who is said to have been a very friendly and sympathetic man but was famous for his violent outbursts after taking a portion of hard stuff).
Thirdly specifically for intravenous narcotics: the problem of the needle sharing by which deceases spread.

Narcosalas are places comparable to hospitals or hostels which offer the hard drugs free to the addicted on condition that they consume them inside the narcosalas. There is a small medical and psychiatric team which takes care of the hygiene (no shared needles e.g.) and of safety (like violent reaction afterwards et altera). Of course if one of their patients wants to kick the habit he gets their full support. Result: hard drug addicts are not anymore stealing to pay their drugs, are better controlled because they are in a central place and most importantly THERE IS NO ILLEGAL MARKET ANYMORE FOR NARCOTICS. I do not know whether all I said is correct. I would really appreciate if some real Madrileno would correct me. Anyway, being against hard drugs myself, I am very much in favour of this solution. Why isn't it applied on a larger scale? I see two reasons why it might (potentialis):

1. The "war against drugs" has become a gigantic industry on which carreers of a lot of people depend etc. (in sociology the "iron law Michels": every originally well meant institution becomes in the end a force in itself, starts to live its own live and tries to legitimise itself, remain necessary even if it is not needed anymore or inefficient)
2. Close to the one above but rather political: finishing the "war against drugs" would mean a complete turn-around in policy and moral. Many would not be able to reconcile this "revolution" with their deepest opinions about the world (primary or secondary level of Rokeach for the connaisseurs) It would also mean a turn-around in ideology which brings us to the next point:
3. In Catholicism and maybe in other religions as well, but Catholicism is the only one I know a bit, one never gives up someone else. Subsequently, providing someone the tools to destroy himself ie hard drugs is out of the question according to mainstream Catholic theology. I do not know how other Christians think about this, Orthodox Christians probably the same, Calvinist protestants too although they probably more easily will allow someone to take decisions about himself because in the end everyone is "predestined". But I am not an expert so you are welcome to correct me.

Re:DARE didn't work for my class

[GypC]

Caffeine is almost certainly worse for you physically (assuming you eat it instead of smoke it), and more addictive. Caffiene directly contributes to cardiovascular diseases, birth defects, and reproductive deficiencies. My wife gets splitting headaches when she doesn't have her daily coffee, while I can stop toking for weeks with no harmful effects aside from a mild craving the first day I go without.

Nevertheless, in today's draconian atmosphere I encourage you not to get involved with illicit drugs lest you find yourself in jail.

"Free your mind and your ass will follow"

Re:Having lived both in the States and outside...

[GypC]

Weed is normal. It's been in use for tens of thousands of years and doesn't appear to be stopping anytime soon.

What is not normal is people illegalizing flowers.

"Free your mind and your ass will follow"

Re:Young 'uns

[Skim123]

Think about it. What's a gateway to what? Why are some drugs "bad" and some drugs "good"?

I guess it's not necessarily the drug itself that is bad, it's the fact that it's illegal. True or false: you are more likely to commit an illegal act if you've already committed one. I'd say true, and I'd wager that the stats would back it up... I have no numbers to back this up, but I assume the majority of people in prison had broken the law sometime prior to their arrest. Well, maybe that's not a great example.

Anyway, I see it like this... if my teenage kid hangs around a peer group that smokes pot, my kid is more likely to try a harder drug than if he just hangs around with a peer group that drinks alcohol. Again, I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, but I would bet that if you polled those who had done harder drugs, the percentage of that population who had done pot would be higher than the general public. Do you agree with that or not? Assuming that is true, there is a definite postivie correlation between pot usage and heavy drug usage.... is there a cause and effect? I dunno, but there is truly a correlation.

Re:Has DARE been effective?

[mad_clown]

I'm two years into university now, and as such, I haven't been in D.A.R.E. for a very, very long time. Perhaps it's changed since the days when I was there, but as I remember it, we spend alot of time practicing "assertive techniques," such as the following:

Insidious Druggie: Hey, wanna smoke some dope?

Assertive Kid: No! Let's go play some basketball instead!

Insidious Druggie: Hey that sounds like alot more fun than wasting my life doing drugs!

Assertive Kid: Cool!

As you can clearly see, at least back when I was in D.A.R.E., the situations kids were tought to react to absolutely unrealistic to begin with. In my experience, and opinoin, D.A.R.E. teaches kids to be snitches (i.e. report people who you think might be drug users/dealers to your parents, teachers, or the authorities), and teaches them a host of overexaggerated factoids meant to scare impressionable young minds into not using substances. Maybe it works on some people, but observation and common sense dictates that people who are going to use drugs are going to use them regardless of whether or not someone tells them not to. D.A.R.E., and indeed the whole "war on drugs" is a futile and senseless waste of taxpayer dollars.

---------------

Re:You tell me

[G Neric]

probably shouldn't involve kicking down their door and throwing them in a federal prison

You're exaggerating.

I'm not going to defend the war on drugs (or DARE), but it is simply not true that the police are kicking down users' door. Drug use is easy and routine for anybody who wants to. The police do go after dealers, and you might be unlucky and drop your dope when you get stopped for speeding, but worry about your door getting kicked down? Nonsense. I'm sure the police use it as an excuse to harass certain populations, but they'd just find a different excuse if this one were takn away.

Re:95%? Wrong.

[Wah]

Poster enjoys alcohol, but has never gotten a DWI because he does not drink and drive (duh!). Sleep in your car!

If you follow this advice, follow this little bit also. Hide your keys before you pass out. If a cop taps on the window, you wake up (and will undoubtedly smell of alcohol), have your keys on you and you officially have a DWI. It's not fair or right, IMHO, but that's what MADD and others have left us with. (note: this may only be true in Colorado, check with local authorities)

On another note, I've been in a hottub with 17 naked people (of various sexes) in the middle of the afternoon, and I have alcohol to thank for it. (I've had good times sober too, but not quite as extreme nor as often)
--

Re:You tell me

[rlk]

Have to disagree here. I've seen way too many people who's lives have been adversely affected by drug use. What they don't realize is that just because they aren't out shooting and killing people, that doesn't mean that people's lives are not being affected by their choice of living. There may be a few exceptions, yes, but the large majority of drug users don't do any good by their drug use.

Well, I'm sure there are a lot of people's lives affected by my decision to become a software engineer. Other people's lives may be affected because I'm shy, or what not. Rob Hall's and Scott Fischer's families were deeply hurt by their choice to climb Mt. Everest (read Into Thin Air). Your point precisely is?

Everyone's choice of living ultimately affects everyone else, indirectly or otherwise. It isn't mandated that everyone has to live their lives in ways that are most beneficial to everyone else.

This is exactly the tenet of most drug users, especially the casual users. They believe what they're doing is OK, even though they are affecting the lives of those that care for them and love them, in a negative way.

Is that really a matter for the legal system, or would that best be handled by the people in question? What precisely is your point here?

Re:Then explain why people appear to get lower sco

[Cid Highwind]

People who have used drugs seem to get lower grades than when they were not taking drugs as a norm

Your assertion is full of weasel words. You say drug users "seem" to get lower grades, and "appear to get lower scores" because you don't really have the facts, but you want to shout your opinions anyway. Next time you want to debate the effects of pot-smoking on students, bring a few facts instead of your subjective anecdotes.

Most of the studies I have seen from professional teaching institutes have in fact corroprates this

Then link to the studies, or quote the relevant bits. And for chrissakes, learn to spell and use proper verb tense.

This is one of the tell tale signs that parents have been instructed to see if a child is taking drugs

DARE also instructs parents to be suspicious of children wo are concerned for world peace, the environment, or who favor decriminalization, none of which are positive proof of drug use. Your point?

I personally want to know how people on slashdot can say one thing and the data says another

I want to know how you can claim to have the data on your side, without quoting so much as one statistic. Please go troll somewhere else.

DARE dealer

[Boubaki]

In my home town, the DARE leader for quite awhile was a cop who also used and dealt drugs. His position gave him some great oppurtunities... I knew this guy who was caught with a baggie of pot and some regular cigarettes. He was taken in, booked, and released. He was considering fleeing the town, but his parents found him... at which point he found out he'd been charged for the cigarettes only.

The town is Lebanon, OR (97355). I understand that the officer (Martinez IIRC) was eventually suspended. Took a matter of years though.

In my opinion, the war on drugs is pretty stupid anyway. Prisons overflowing with people due to marijuana, despite (a) being a legal medicine in places now, and (b) alcohol being more "dangerous." Think back to the prohibition.

(And actually, I think any "victimless", "protecting the people from themselves" crimes shouldn't be crimes. People want to waste away on crack? Fine by me... educate them on how it'll more or less wreck their lives, don't federally fund their rehab, and if they do it in private, it's their business. People want to off themselves? Well, it's their life, do what you want. Et cetera...)

Boubaki

Re:You tell me

[MaxGrant]

What they don't realize is that just because they aren't out shooting and killing people, that doesn't mean that people's lives are not being affected by their choice of living

Being in a free society means that choices like these are choices not enforced conformity. It is not society's business whether I live a happy, productive life. It is only the opportunity that is provided.

Re:truth

[Cid Highwind]

That's impossible. Firstly, it would require admitting that people are capable of thinking without government assistance. That's no a popular sentiment among the people who run the public schools in America. Second, students might realize that certain illegal drugs are no worse for their health than smoking or drinking. This would lead to uncomfortable questions about why marajuana is illegal, and alcohol is sold in the grocery store. The lies are an integral part of the DARE program.

Re:Young 'uns

[gad_zuki!]

Yes, bad drugs - physically addictive or easy to be injured or killed by using.

Good drugs - non-physically addictive and does same/around damage that smoking and drinking do.

Re:DARE Should Be Discontinued

[nv1ctus]

I have first hand knowledge (since I was actually In a D.A.R.E. program) and I completely agree.

Before dare, our 3rd grade class went from knowing almost nothing about drugs to asking questions like "What does it feel like to be high?" and "Can you show us what a joint looks like?".

After the D.A.R.E. program, it was not uncommon to see some of my classmates making fake joints out of loose leaf paper and laughing as they acted as if they were high.

The D.A.R.E. program did not instill a sense of fear, nor augment any resistance to drugs.
Rather, it increased our curiosity and in a sense made them more glamorous because someone was telling us they were forbidden.

--nv1ctus

No, Weed is Harmless.

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess the question was, does DARE work? I would say so. You're always going to have the lusers and potheads who go and do it anyway thinking they're somehow "cool" by rebelling against the "man". What these idiots fail to realize is they're not gaining anything.. instead of staying clean they're rebelling into the arms of the sadistic drug dealers who rape them for whatever money they can get from them. Do you honestly think your dealer gives a shit whether you live or die? You're just cash flow to them. They can replace you with the next batch of 5th graders. So dopeheads: Get a LIFE! Stop and think about it for a minute. The only people who think you are cool are the other lame ass stoners. I guess you're in good company. Hopefully the Darwin effect will start taking hold and clear the gene pool of you fools.

That is idiotic. I smoked dope every day for a semester once and received a 3.8 GPA for the semester. This included A's in Graph Theory, Real Analysis (Highest Undergrad grade), and Topology (Only Undergrad to make it through). I also scored 790's on the GRE analytic and quatitative tests (same scale as the SAT) the morning after getting blitzed off a joint. I had a dealer who was a friend, and we often smoked together. I quit after weed got hard to find, and suffered no withdrawal symptoms.

I have many intelligent friends involved in research with high GPAs who smoke dope. It is fun, and unlike EtOH, will not shrink your brain or kill your liver. Every year exactly 0 people die of a THC overdose. Compare that to any legal drug on the market, including aspirin.

Perhaps one day you will be able to think critically, until then, I suggest you take a few courses in statistics.

Wholly Ineffective

[Weeb]

Having had DARE thrown at me a few times over my elementary school years, I can tell you with some certainty that DARE was a waste of my time and possibly someone else's money.

Sitting around listening to a cop tell you of the evils inherent to drugs is hardly a deterrent for someone who's really going to grow up and be an addict. Besides, cheap little workbooks and water bottles don't help the drug problem; caring, educating parents help the drug problem.

Health classes were better than DARE. And more fun. They taught us the different slang names for drugs. Which was cool.

My DARE guy was nice, though. Usually we asked him more about all the law-enforcement equipment he carried around with him than about the drugs he came to talk about.

Re:You tell me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but you're blatantly wrong. One of my best friends literally had her door kicked in (actually they used a battering ram) as a result of a fabricated story by a jealous ex-spouse, who fed the local sheriff's department a "Crimestoppers" report about my friend having a marijuana growing operation in her basement. Well they didn't find a growing operation, but they did find a couple of small bags of dope, some baggies (in the kitchen drawer -- what a surprise!), and a postal scale. This was enough for her to be charged with possession with intent to distribute.

That was three-and-a-half years ago. The case has been thrown out by judges twice, but the now-politically-embarassed DA and sheriff's department keeps appealing it. So far the whole affair has cost my friend her house (they tried to seize it as being paid for with "drug profits", even though she has a very-good-paying job and hadn't been convicted of anything, and she ended up having to default on her mortgage to avoid having the sheriff just take it) and more than $25,000 in legal fees.

I know, some of you are saying "gee, that's terrible" and thinking (maybe in the back of your mind) "but it couldn't happen to me or my friends". Think again. The woman this is happening to is a thirty-something senior hospital administrator with an MBA. She's one of the hardest-working and most-respectable people I know, who just happens to sometimes like to smoke a joint with friends on the weekend.

And for those who are really anti-drugs, who may be thinking "it serves her right for using that stuff", ask yourself: If she's had to spend more than $25,000 in legal fees, how much has it cost the government to prosecute the case? The next time there doesn't seem to be enough money for your local schools, or you see your tax bill going up (again), ask yourself how much it is costing you personally to punish a few people for choosing to get a buzz off of marijuana instead of alcohol. If you really take a few minutes to look into it you may find the answer pretty disturbing.


(P.S. Apologies for posting this anonymously -- I know it makes the account less credible, but since the case is still under appeal (yet again) I don't want to take even the slightest tiny chance at saying something that could interfere with her finally getting out of this whole mess. :-P)

Re:Why pot should stay illegal

[elmegil]

Pot is a crime because it's obnoxious. Like I said, it's an airborn intoxicant. You can't keep it to yourself, and you might just want to share it more freely if it were legal. It's outlawed for the same reasons concealed firearms, special nuclear materials and unliscenced explosives are outlawed (think principle, not scale here). People who mess around with these things can inadvertantly harm others.

No, it's illegal because Harry Anslinger was looking for something to do with his thugs after alcohol prohibition ended. Go read some history, it's enlightening. The two main factors in the prohibition of drugs were 1) a government agency looking for a new charter and 2) racism--to wit, dope was only smoked by "wetbacks and negro jazz musicians". To justify the crusade against dope, they made a big deal about black men smoking a joint and then *daring* to look at a white woman. Claims were made that it made the underclass agressive, despite the fact that anyone familiar with Cheech & Chong knows it makes you silly & kinda stupid (and a lot less agressive than alcohol does).

DARE is bs because, as many other people have pointed out, it basically lies to kids, and when they realize they've been lied to about one thing, they don't have the maturity to realize that they weren't lied to about some of the others (like cocaine will kill you dead, even if it's the same dose you took yesterday, for reasons that have not been adequately researched; like heroin WILL mess you up badly).

And zero tolerance just teaches you that the adults want to control the world and don't give a shit about what makes sense. And puts people in jail whose only crime has been against themselves (if that).

I hear that most crimes are committed by young men between 16 and 25. Let's put them all in jail up front so they can't hurt anyone, that'd be an effective deterrent. That's the equivalent of your line of reasoning. The main reason drug use is associated with crime is because tada! drug use is defined to be a crime. Go figure.

Re:DARE to turn in your relatives

[ChadN]

Furthermore, Frontline also recently aired an incredible two pair episode on PBS called Drug Wars [pbs.org], which I urge everyone to see.

Basically, it shows that all the money spent on drug interdiction efforts has had ZERO effect on the availability of drugs in the U.S., and that the entire "supply side" effort of drug control has not worked. Yet, the huge funding available for enforcement has only helped to enrich the agencies competing for all this money. Basically, a drug enforcement industrial complex (to paraphrase Eisenhower).

*applauds* Well said!

[fable2112]

Damn, I wish I had some moderator points right now. :)

Society's approach to chemicals is insane to say the least. The variant at my college was the counseling center throwing Zoloft at anyone who asked for drugs subsequent to a classmate of mine committing suicide by ODing on Zoloft. Irresponsible much?

My particular circle of friends at college ranged from those who never did any drugs whatsoever (including alcohol and tobacco, possibly including caffeine) for religious/moral or medical reasons, all the way to the guy who decided one day to take the shrooms he somehow forgot he had stashed in his desk. The users didn't do anything beyond politely asking if someone wished to partake with them, the non-users didn't preach about the evils of drugs, keys were taken away as appropriate, people followed the rules of whatever house they were in at the time, and it all worked just fine.

Legal adults ought to have the opportunity to make up their own damn minds about what they choose to ingest. They should also deal with the consequences should they harm someone else while under the influence. I'd also rather see impairment testing for drivers etc. than straight BAC and such -- I don't care if a driver is imparied from alcohol, illegal drugs, legal medication or lack of sleep. If said driver is impaired, said driver has no business behind a wheel.

Why are these things so difficult to comprehend?

taxes pay for distribution of gov't propaganda

[The_Messenger]

I don't know why I'm even bothering to comment after there have already been 600+ comments, but I am anyway.

First of all, let me say that except for caffeine and the occasional (once a year, at most) alcoholic beverage, I do not and never have "done drugs", of any kind. Now let me explain some things.

I went through DARE (in elemenary or middle school, I forget which) and one of those "health" classes in high school, and they had absolutely no impact on my behavior. Looking back on this "education", I am disgusted at the blatant misinformation that was distributed. Part of this was simply ignorance; clueless teachers with 20-year old textbooks. But as someone who knows more than the average bear of the scienific/medical facts about addiction, it's quite obvious that this "education" was merely another fallicy produced by the so-called war on drugs.

Not everyone who "does drugs" will become addicted. It has less to do with the type of drug or frequency of use than it has to do with your family history. Except for some of the most addictive substances, such as nicotine, the predisposition to addiction is determined by your genetic makeup. On a larger scale, your ethnic heritage and your ancestors' accumlated resistance to these substances comes into play. On a smaller scale, look at your family tree. If one parent is an addict, there is a 50% that the genetic predispoition to addiction will be passed from parent to child.

However, DARE and similar "health" programs paint a picture where you partake of the substance once, start craving the drug more and more, and than all of a sudden you "cross the line" and become an addict. Your children are being lied to, just as you were. Yes, the regular intake certain substances can have a negative impact on your life, especially if you are an addict, but the information being distributed by the government regarding this topic is mere fantasy. It's propaganda, pure and simple.

I could go on for another few pages about why the government does this, but I won't. I'll leave you with a quote from George Clinton: "There's more money in pretending to stop it than selling it."

Vote Libertarian.

---------///----------
All generalizations are false.

Re:Has DARE been effective?

[Felstorm]

I took the DARE program in elemantary school. The one thing the class did was give me an overwhelming desire to get the real facts on drugs.(Through experimentation of course.) Less than half of what the DARE officers said was true, I have yet to meet a "Drug Pusher", trying to sell anyone marijuana. It usually the crack dealers trying to sell stuff to minors. And that is usually because getting a job isnt as profitable as selling crack to kids. Hey it's like 20$ a "rock", sell 10-20 rocks in a day thats more than you would ever make in a day at the local McDonald$.

Now DARE should really try to do something different than terrorize "the children", and turn them into little informants for the FBI. My step-brother, 10yrs. old, swears on the DARE Manual that I will turn into a heroin junky if I come home from work and throw back a brew. I asked him where he got that ludicrous idea from..."The DARE ossifer" was the reply. Okay, how is ONE beer going to turn me into a Junky? For that matter how would one joint turn me into a junky? Hell, if I smoke pot I could end up president of the united states one day.... and have hemp seed beer provided for me on Airforce one.... Uh oh, did I expose a double standard? Oh wait, no use in stating the obvious...

D.A.R.E. is a Profit-Making Business

[billstewart]

D.A.R.E. was founded by Daryl Gates, the infamous Los Angeles police chief. It's a huge profit-making business - T-Shirts, bumper stickers, classroom material. That business is theoretically separate from the police departments, who also get to collect lots of money in police overtime for teaching school D.A.R.E. classes. Yes, your schools are spending their education money funding cops instead of trained teachers teaching about drugs - is that a good idea in general, much less because police are in the warring-against-drugs business instead of the education business? And do you think kids are going to ask cops potentially incriminating questions, like "my friend tried some marijuana and was stoned for a couple of days - is that normal?" Tough enough getting them to ask teachers.

You've probably seen the T-shirt "D.A.R.E. - I turned in my parents and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt"? Orange County CA cops busted a local hemp store for selling them, and confiscated all their shirts, claiming it was a trademark violation. So much for Supreme Court cases on parody and First Amendment protection.

Here's a Northernlights search URL [northernlight.com] for "Parents Against D.A.R.E., a parents group opposing this scam.

Holy jesus christ.

[Wakko Warner]

You've successfully rolled every fallacy and overinflation of the truth about marijuana into one post. Congratulations on an *incredible* troll!

- A.P.

--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.

Re:Young 'uns

[Skim123]

Well, I think that pretty much ALL crack and heroin users have had coffee at least once. Does that mean that coffee is a stepping stone

I would say yes if you could show that the percentage of heroin users that drink coffee is significantly higher than the percentage of non-heroin users who drink coffee.

Re:You tell me

[mpe]

One, it wouldn't work. Smuggling is easy when you have lots of money, which drug smugglers do. There is always an unprotected place (how much coastline does the U.S. have? how much of it is private property?) where it's possible to bring contraband into the country.

Also it costs a lot of money to pay these paramilitary police enough to make them unbribable. (With more costs in making themm unblackmailable.)

The war on drugs is misguided. Casual drug use isn't *really* a problem. Lots of successful, happy people smoke pot with no ill effects. Why make it illegal when it's not worse than cigarettes or alcohol?

In terms of clinical effects alcohol and cigarettes are considerably more dangerous than some "illegals". (Also nicotine should probably be classified as a "hard" drug in terms of it's toxicity and adictivness.)

The problem with drugs is that people do get addicted and such abuse can ruin their lives. But this is a medical problem, not a law enforcement one.

There are law enforcement issues associated with drug use such as intoxicated people driving cars. However it's more PC to knock down the doors of responsible people using certain drugs. Than to confiscate the drivers licences (and vehicles) of people too irresponsible to be on the road in the first place.

Think of all the violent crimes that occur as a result of the illicit drug trade. Has drug interdiction helped at all?

Did it help 80 years ago? Indeed prohibition actually made problems of alcohol adiction worst. Learning from history is hard for politicans...

Re:You tell me

[mpe]

as for marijuana, in the last 20 years exactly 0 people have died from using it directly.

IIRC there is only ond death certificate issued in the last 200 years which lists the cause of death as "overdose of marijuana". With the person having actually been killed by a truckload of hemp falling on them.
There is also some reseach which supposedly shows cannabis causing brain damage, but actually shows carbon monoxide poisioning.

Re:You tell me

[mpe]

...until someone on LSD goes off and kills a bunch of people,

As opposed to people who kill a bunch of people because of religious/political beliefs or some form of insanity. Is there actual clinical evidence that LSD causes people to become homicidal.

or someone on coke has a massive car accident. Hell, alcohol is a huge law enforcement problem (drunk driving, etc.), and that is a legal drug!

But it is illegal to drive a car whilst intoxicated with alcohol. Why should be become legal to drive a car whilst intoxicated with TCH, LSD, Cocaine, Di-Morphine, etc?
Do laws against criminal damage, assault, homicide, make exceptions for people who are voluntarily intoxicated? Should they?

Re:You tell me

[mpe]

The marijuana would be less of a problem than cigarettes or alcohol is very flawed. First, there are very few people who would say that smoking is not a problem in our society.

Except that there are several other ways of ingesting marijuana, even if it is smoked in need not be as cigarettes...

Re:Why pot should stay illegal

[mpe]

Pot is a crime because it's obnoxious. Like I said, it's an airborn intoxicant. You can't keep it to yourself, and you might just want to share it more freely if it were legal.

Whilst in might be if smoked like tobacco. However it isn't airborn when made into a tea, placed in a food (either as hemp flowers or as an oil), chewed, etc. etc. Also less likely to be an issue of passive smoking if some kind of "bong" is used.

Re:Why pot should stay illegal

[quonsar]

DARE is bs because, as many other people have pointed out, it basically lies to kids, and when they realize they've been lied to about one thing...

...they write your lying ass off for a lifetime. the irony is that we expend effort to teach children that police officers are thier friends, then DARE sends police officers in to do the lying. kids don't forget.

"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up

Alcohol used to be illegal, but now it's legal.

[cpeterso]

All illegal drugs are bad. They serve no real purpose and cause great harm.

During the Prohibition, alcohol was illegal. Does that mean alcohol used to be bad, have no real purpose, and cause great harm? Possibly. But now alcohol is legal. Does that mean that alcohol is suddenly good? That is suddenly serves a "real" purpose and causes NO harm?

Cigarettes are legal, too. Do cigarettes serve a real purpose and cause no harm?