{"id":7579,"date":"2017-07-13T22:30:46","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T22:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com?p=2715459&amp;preview_id=2715459"},"modified":"2017-07-13T22:30:46","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T22:30:46","slug":"a-brief-history-of-d-a-r-e-the-80s-anti-drug-program-jeff-sessions-wants-to-revive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/a-brief-history-of-d-a-r-e-the-80s-anti-drug-program-jeff-sessions-wants-to-revive\/","title":{"rendered":"A brief history of D.A.R.E., the \u201980s anti-drug program Jeff Sessions wants to revive"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/a-brief-history-of-d-a-r-e-the-80s-anti-drug-program-jeff-sessions-wants-to-revive\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><div class=\"media_block\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"large-10 large-centered small-12 columns\">\n<div class=\"entry-meta-date\">Published: Jul 13, 2017, 8:07 am \u2022 Updated: Jul 13, 2017, 8:07 am<span class=\"single-comments-link\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"byline\">By <strong>Christopher Ingraham<\/strong>, <em> The Washington Post<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecannabist.co\/2017\/07\/12\/jeff-sessions-illegal-drugs-potency-cost\/83556\/\">Speaking at a D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) conference this week<\/a>, Attorney General Jeff Sessions praised the past work of the famous anti-drug program, saying it saved lives:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe that D.A.R.E. was instrumental to our success by educating children on the dangers of drug use. I firmly believe that you have saved lives. And I want to say thank you for that. Whenever I ask adults around age 30 about prevention, they always mention the D.A.R.E. program. Your efforts work. Lives and futures are saved.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sessions may believe that the program saved lives but decades of evidence-based research, including some conducted by the Justice Department he now heads, has shown the program to be ineffective \u2014 and it might even make the drug problem worse. A little history:<\/p>\n<p>D.A.R.E. <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/1993-09-09\/news\/mn-33226_1_anti-drug-program\">was founded in 1983<\/a> as a partnership between the Los Angeles Police Department and L.A.\u2019s public schools. The idea was simple: Officers would go into schools to talk to kids, \u201cboosting the self-esteem of students so that they can resist the temptation to use drugs,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/1993-09-09\/news\/mn-33226_1_anti-drug-program\">as the L.A. Times put it<\/a> in a 10-year retrospective on the program written in 1993.<\/p>\n<p>The program drew bipartisan praise and spread like wildfire. Politicians realized that by supporting D.A.R.E., they could paint themselves as pro-cops and pro-kids: a win-win. Ronald Reagan proclaimed the first \u201cNational D.A.R.E. Day\u201d in 1988, a tradition that continued <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presidency.ucsb.edu\/ws\/index.php?pid=90236\">well into the Obama administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, the program was put in place in up to 75 percent of the nation\u2019s school districts, by D.A.R.E.\u2019s own count. At its height, the group boasted an 8-figure budget, with much of that money coming from government sources. Individual state affiliates raised millions more.<\/p>\n<p>But with success came scrutiny. Public health researchers started looking for evidence that the program was meeting its goals of reducing teen drug use. The first wave of studies, published in the early 1990s, didn\u2019t find any.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe effectiveness of D.A.R.E. in altering students\u2019 drug use behavior has yet to be established,\u201d concluded <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/1993-09-09\/news\/mn-33226_1_anti-drug-program\/2\">a University of Illinois at Chicago study<\/a> in 1991.<\/p>\n<p>Other research arrived at similar results. In 1994 the Research Triangle Institute, funded in part by the Department of Justice, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC1615171\/pdf\/amjph00460-0036.pdf\">conducted a meta-analysis<\/a> of all the existing research on D.A.R.E. Its conclusion was withering: D.A.R.E. had little to no impact on rates of teen drug use.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cD.A.R.E.\u2019s limited influence on adolescent drug use behavior contrasts with the program\u2019s popularity and prevalence,\u201d the authors wrote. \u201cAn important implication is that D.A.R.E. could be taking the place of other, more beneficial drug use curricula that adolescents could be receiving.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The DOJ was so incensed by this unexpected finding that it <a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/newspapers?nid=1876&amp;dat=19941106&amp;id=EbQeAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=Rs8EAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=6923,1403055\">refused to publish the study<\/a>, according to contemporaneous news reports. \u201cI don\u2019t get it,\u201d D.A.R.E.\u2019s executive director at the time said of the RTI study\u2019s findings. \u201cIt\u2019s like kicking Santa Claus to me. We\u2019re as pure as the driven snow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the kicking had only just begun. More studies showing similar findings trickled out in the 1990s. One study even suggested that D.A.R.E. students were <a href=\"http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1177\/0022427898035004002\">more likely than their peers<\/a> to experiment with drugs and alcohol. The authors of that study chalked that up to a possible boomerang effect: \u201can attempt to persuade resulting in the adoption of an opposing position instead.\u201d Telling a certain type of kid that he shouldn\u2019t do drugs may simply result in him trying drugs out of spite.<\/p>\n<p>By 2003 the Government Accountability Office launched its own D.A.R.E. study to see if the Department of Justice was getting a decent return on its D.A.R.E investment. The conclusion? \u201cNo significant differences in illicit drug use between students who received D.A.R.E.\u201d and those who didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>The GAO report was the beginning of the end of D.A.R.E. as most of us knew it. Funding started to dry up: in 2002, before the GAO report, D.A.R.E. had an annual budget of over $10 million dollars. By 2012, <a href=\"https:\/\/projects.propublica.org\/nonprofits\/organizations\/954242541\">that figure had shrunk<\/a> to $3.5 million.<\/p>\n<p>By the late 2000s, D.A.R.E. was faced with a choice: change or die. They opted for the former. The group decided to cautiously embrace evidence-based research after <a href=\"http:\/\/www.courtinnovation.org\/sites\/default\/files\/DARE.pdf\">decades of antagonism toward it<\/a>. The most significant change was the adoption of a new curriculum, entitled \u201ckeepin\u2019 it REAL.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cringeworthy title aside, some of the research on this program to date suggests it actually works. It was commended in the recent Surgeon General\u2019s Report on drug addiction for demonstrating efficacy at preventing substance use. The secret? \u201cIt\u2019s not an anti-drug program,\u201d a co-developer of the new curriculum <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/the-new-d-a-r-e-program-this-one-works\/\">told Scientific American in 2014<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s about things like being honest and safe and responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If it almost seems like D.A.R.E. isn\u2019t really an anti-drug group anymore, that\u2019s because it isn\u2019t. The group explicitly spells this new reality out in its tax filings. Prior to 2009, D.A.R.E. stated on its 990 IRS filings that its mission was \u201cto implement and support drug abuse resistance education and crime prevention programs in the USA.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Post-2009, <a href=\"https:\/\/projects.propublica.org\/nonprofits\/download-filing?path=2015_06_EO%2F95-4242541_990_201412.pdf\">its mission is to simply<\/a> \u201cteach students good decision making skills to help them lead safe and healthy lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone in the public health community is convinced the new D.A.R.E. is any better than the old D.A.R.E. A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/09687637.2016.1208731\">peer-reviewed study<\/a> published last year found that the specific versions of the keepin\u2019 it REAL curriculum used by D.A.R.E. haven\u2019t been tested for efficacy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe systematic review revealed major shortfalls in the evidence basis for the KiR D.A.R.E. programme,\u201d that study\u2019s authors conclude. \u201cWithout empirical evidence, we cannot conclusively confirm or deny the effectiveness of the programme. However, we can conclude that the evidence basis for the D.A.R.E. version of KiR is weak, and that there is substantial reason to believe that KiR D.A.R.E. may not be suited for nationwide implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s no doubt, however, that D.A.R.E. is currently making an effort to adopt more of an evidence-based approach than in prior years, when the program\u2019s practices were largely driven by the belief that they were \u201cpure as the driven snow.\u201d This brings us back to the central irony of Jeff Sessions\u2019 remarks yesterday, when he yearned for a return to the D.A.R.E. of \u201cthe 1980s and the 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Decades of research are unequivocal: the D.A.R.E. of yesteryear didn\u2019t work, and it may have actually made the drug problem worse. Instead of embracing D.A.R.E.\u2019s new evidence-based practices, Sessions offered up a return to the bad old days of drug policy, when decisions were driven by gut feeling and political expediency.<\/p>\n<p>We already know how that story ended: billions of dollars spent, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecannabist.co\/2017\/06\/06\/mass-incarceration-jeff-sessions-mandatory-minimum\/80572\/\">millions of people imprisoned<\/a>, and stronger, cheaper drugs. D.A.R.E. is already trying to turn the page on the harsh and ineffective drug policies of the past. At the moment, it appears the Justice Department is trying to revive them.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .row --> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><\/div>\n<p>Jeff Sessions supports the D.A.R.E. anti-drug program, but decades of evidence-based research has shown the program to be ineffective. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[371,7143,6911,6964,77,5667,9,6855,5019,441,466,1,3,61,1736],"tags":[2949,7144,6912,6967,2655,5673,6856,5022,3015,3040],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}