Pubdate: Sat, 02 Feb 2002
Source: New Scientist (UK)
PageS: 44 - 45
Copyright: New Scientist, RBI Limited 2002
Contact:  http://www.newscientist.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/294
Author: Maia Szalavitz
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?135 (Drug Education)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/dare.htm (D.A.R.E.)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

DARE TO CHANGE

The American Public Supports A Tough Stance On Drugs, Even Though It 
Doesn't Work. The Only Way Things Can Change Is If The Media Start 
Confronting Some Unpalatable Facts, Says Maia Szalavitz.

TO OUTSIDERS, it will seem shockingly narrow-minded. At a conference on 
drug abuse last year, sponsored by the US government's Center for Substance 
Abuse Prevention, a speaker was shouted down and told to "Shut the fuck 
up". Her crime? Simply saying that government anti-drugs funds should go 
only to programmes based on methods that have been shown to work, and for 
suggesting that a popular scheme called Girl Talk wasn't one of them. Only 
the conservative media thought the incident worth mentioning: the woman who 
had been silenced was a noted conservative.

But for anyone following the debate over US drugs policy, intolerance of 
dissent will be depressingly familiar. Lack of respect for research is an 
endemic problem in this area. It is not helped by the media, whose 
uncritical support for anything that claims to be "anti-drugs" only 
encourages the proliferation of ineffective and expensive programmes.

Girl Talk promotes the idea that helping girls achieve more in 
traditionally "masculine" areas makes them less likely to use drugs. Yet 
since boys are at least twice as likely to use drugs as girls, this notion 
is questionable, and there isn't a shred of independent research to back it up.

The DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) programme is an even bigger 
scandal, if only because it operates on such a large scale. DARE is 
conducted by police officers in 80 per cent of American schools. Children 
are taught that all drugs - including alcohol and tobacco - are equally 
harmful and given tips on the best ways to "just say no". In the past Glenn 
Levant, the programme's founder, regularly demonised researchers for 
faulting his programme, calling their work "voodoo science" and accusing 
them of "kicking Santa Claus" and "setting out to find ways to attack our 
programmes".

But a year ago he changed his tune. The government, embarrassed over the 
absence of any sound data supporting DARE, threatened to withdraw funding. 
No published, peer-reviewed study has found that DARE reduces drug use 
among adolescents, while several have indicated increased use among 
participants. Yet it took more than 18 years and a dozen solid negative 
studies of thousands of children before the point hit home.

More remarkable still, at the same time that Levant was reflecting on the 
ineffectiveness of his programme, he announced that he'd received a $13.7 
million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to revamp it. DARE is 
so deeply entrenched in so many schools, that the foundation decided it 
would be better not to start from scratch.

The media's ambivalent attitude towards DARE surely influenced its 
decision. Just weeks before Levant's announcement, a reporter from the Long 
Island-based tabloid Newsday, one of the largest local newspapers in the 
US, summed up the DARE debate in the following way: "Different camps cite 
conflicting studies, some indicating that DARE is effective and some that 
it isn't." If Newsday had done a five-second Web search to check both 
sides' citations, it would have found that the real data supports only one 
position.

Most newspapers treat research as just another partisan voice. One Iowa 
paper wrote in September: "Most of the studies that have questioned DARE's 
effectiveness show that the message does not last - that those students who 
receive DARE as their only lesson on drug abuse have forgotten the message 
by the time they hit high school. That doesn't mean it isn't effective as a 
starting point." Sounds like addict logic to me: if it's not working, try more.

It gets worse. Consider DARE's basic premise - that police officers should 
teach children about drugs. Teenagers mistrust authority figures on this 
subject, and are more likely to heed peers or adults whom they know - 
something social scientists have understood for years. DARE is now taught 
to 10 and 11-year-olds, who compete eagerly for DARE shirts and praise from 
its officers. But the revamped DARE will run in high school, where 
teenagers' interests in DARE paraphernalia is more likely to be ironic. 
It's sure to raise a laugh at raves. Yet a major foundation has agreed to 
fund yet more research - and still no one asks why.

There's a deeper problem here. The government's position that drug use is 
always harmful is scientifically dubious. Unfortunately, a 1994 law lays 
down that federally funded prevention programmes must have a strict "no 
use" message. This effectively blocks any significant change of tactics 
even outside DARE. Political change will be needed before anti-drugs 
efforts can begin to improve. To stimulate this change there needs to be 
better research and reporting. The quality British press, for example, has 
been far more sceptical of anti-drugs crusaders; and Britain has better 
drugs policies to show for it. The British government has been funding 
needle-exchange programmes for drug addicts since 1988, as a way to limit 
the spread of HIV. The US government has still not managed to do anything 
similar, despite scientific support from every major concerned body.

What sounds good isn't necessarily what works. Two major reviews of 
existing data on drugs prevention programmes - one American, one British - 
have found that there is no known programme that actually cuts illegal drug 
use. After billions of dollars and over three decades, not one has had a 
significant and lasting effect. So why not test alternatives?

It may be time to try programmes aimed at reducing the harm drugs do, 
rather than their use. It may be possible to cut addiction and overdose 
rates. But we'll never know unless American journalists hold the largest 
funder of drugs research in the world - the US government - accountable. So 
here's an appeal to American reporters: start to confront your biases and 
those of your audience, and make the effort to understand the science. Dare 
to follow the data, not the crowd.

Maia Szalavitz is co-author of "Recovery Options: The Complete Guide" 
(Wiley, 2000) and writes regularly on science and drugs policy.
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