Pubdate: Sun, 21 May 2006
Source: Roanoke Times (VA)
Copyright: 2006 Roanoke Times
Contact:  http://www.roanoke.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/368
Note: First priority is to those letter-writers who live in circulation area.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?135 (Drug Education)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/dare.htm (D.A.R.E.)

ANTI-DRUG PROGRAMS FAIL TO MAKE THE GRADE

The nation's schools pour $1 billion a year into ineffective 
drug-prevention programs.

High school students are no smarter about saying no to illicit drugs 
than their parents were -- despite the billions of dollars that the 
nation's schools have pumped into drug-prevention programs.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse has tracked illicit drug use 
since 1976. Then, 58 percent of high school seniors used an illicit 
drug. Today, 30 years later, 52 percent have.

The numbers have bounced around, dropping to a low of 40 percent in 
1992. "The trend rises and falls, and we have no clue why," Richard 
Clayton, at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, told 
the Los Angeles Times.

But researchers do know this: DARE, or Drug Abuse Resistance 
Education, doesn't work. Yet schools remain hooked.

The federal government some years ago dropped DARE from the approved 
list of anti-drug programs in which schools can use federal funds. 
But, as the Times reported, DARE is still used in 70 percent of U.S. schools.

Programs that rely on a simplistic, anecdotal curriculum and imply 
wide use of illicit drugs are equally ineffective and may actually 
nudge kids toward drug use. University of North Carolina at Chapel 
Hill researchers reported in 2002 that only 35 percent of public 
schools and 13 percent of private schools had effective programs.

Drug-prevention programs should reflect local circumstances. The 
needs of an urban system where kids sling dope in the hallways differ 
from a suburban district where kids raid the medicine cabinet.

Further, researchers find effective programs incorporate role-playing 
and relevant information about drugs rather than push scare tactics 
and a blanket disapproval of all drugs and alcohol. Kids are confused 
by anti-drug programs that oversimplify that all drugs are bad, 
teaching that all drinking is bad for instance, even though they see 
their parents sip an occasional glass of wine.

Parents, unsurprisingly, have more influence than school programs on 
whether their children use illicit drugs. Still society expects, and 
the government demands, that schools teach drug prevention. With the 
cost exceeding $1 billion a year, kids should be learning what they 
need to know. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake