In today’s edition, Greater Media Newspapers presents a special report on the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program that is offered in a majority of area schools.
These schools in Monmouth, Ocean and Middlesex counties are not alone in offering DARE. According to the Internet Web site www.dare.com, DARE is now being implemented in more than 80 percent of the nation’s school districts and in 54 countries around the world.
In recent years, DARE has come in for criticism as doubts have surfaced about its effectiveness in preventing its graduates from becoming drug users and drug abusers after going through the program.
Although the DARE curriculum now focuses on more than just drug use, that is clearly the function for which the program is known.
DARE’s critics contend that the program has not shown a measurable effect on preventing youngsters from becoming drug users or falling into the trap of drug abuse.
Another criticism leveled at the program is that the amount of funding appropriated to the well-publicized DARE franchise limits the availability of funding to other programs which might have the potential to be more successful.
While other programs exist, their effectiveness or ineffectiveness has never been demonstrated, in part because of that lack of funding.
What it comes down to is, DARE or any other known school-based anti-drug education program cannot be counted on to keep kids off drugs.
If children see drug use in their homes and in their neighborhoods, then no amount of time spent in a classroom with a friendly police officer is going to alter that message.
In the final analysis, it’s up to the residents of each community and to the administrators of local school districts to decide whether DARE is a program that works for them, whether it should be a part of a broader anti-drug social skills program or whether there are programs other than DARE that can deliver an anti-drug message more effectively.