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. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake