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Truth or DARE:
Drug program's worth debated
by Robb Fulcher
As beach cities police are being asked to prove the effectiveness of the DARE drug prevention program, the subject continues to engage researchers and advocates in a national debate.
The 17-year-old DARE, America's most popular anti-drug program, is taught by police officers to 26 million schoolchildren in about 80 percent of U.S. school districts, and to kids in 50 countries worldwide.
Locally, the Beach Cities Health District board has indicated that it will ask police officials to show that DARE is effective in preventing substance abuse among young people, in a move that could affect a portion of the program's funding.
Daring to question
Nationwide, a number of studies have found DARE to be ineffective or even counterproductive, and several cities, including Oakland, Omaha, Seattle and Spokane, Wash., have dropped the program.
"Scientifically sound studies have failed to find any short- or long-term effects of DARE on drug use," wrote Donald R. Lyman, assistant psychology professor at the University of Kentucky and co-author of a study published in the August 1999 issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
Lyman, writing in the October 1999 edition of American Teacher, stated that the study found "no differences between those who received DARE and those who did not in their use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana or other drugs, expectancies about these drugs, or levels of peer pressure resistance."
The study focused on 1,000 Midwestern students who had participated in DARE in sixth grade, assessing them yearly until 10th grade and contacting them again when they were 20 years old.
A study financed by the Illinois State Police, the findings of which were released in 1998, found that DARE has inadvertently encouraged some students to try drugs.
Daring to defend
Glenn Levant, president and founding director of the non-profit DARE America, based in Inglewood, has assailed the University of Kentucky study for tracking students who had taken only one elementary course without any follow-up at the higher grade levels.
Lyman responded by saying there was no reason to believe that an ineffective educational program would become effective through reinforcement.
One study, conducted in 1996 by Ohio State University researcher Joseph Donnermeyer, tracked former DARE students who have completed more than one course.
That survey of 3,150 11th graders found that of students who completed several DARE courses, 72 percent had never, or hardly ever, used drugs or alcohol in the previous year, compared to 58 percent of those who took no DARE courses.
Even students who had taken only one DARE course fared well, with 63 percent of them falling into that "low risk" category.
Hermosa's DARE program is taught in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades, while the Redondo and Manhattan programs are offered in fifth, sixth, eighth and 12th grades.
DARE's standard curriculum includes instructional films, role-playing, conflict management and peer-led sessions.
DARE America spokesman Ralph Lochridge said in a Tuesday interview that the program has been greatly revised since it was taught to the students tracked in the Kentucky study.
An earlier study led by Richard Clayton, also with the University of Kentucky, called for more DARE reinforcement throughout the grade levels, and also led to a more "interactive" approach with role-playing, group discussions and video presentations, Lochridge said.
"He felt the lecture approach was not effective with kids," Lochridge said.
Asked if the favorable results of the Donnermeyer study would hold up to a Lyman-like study tracking the same students 10 years down the road, Lochridge said no education program can guarantee its students will all remain drug free.
"There are 47 different universal programs out there," he said. "We happen to believe our program is the best."
Daring to review
On the local funding front, Beach Cities Health District board member Vanessa Poster said the board is pushing to review the effectiveness of all the programs it supports, and is not singling out DARE. The district's current funding for beach cities DARE programs ends June 30.
The health district now provides $15,000 a year to Redondo, 12 percent of that city's DARE program, and $7,000 a year to Manhattan, 9 percent of that city's program, according to contracts on file at the health district.
The district gives $2,000 a year to Hermosa's DARE program. That contract does not include information on the total budget for the program, and the officer in charge of Hermosa DARE was unavailable this week. ER