DARE 2.0 is "Keepin' it Real" in US schools
Despite decades of evidence that the drug education program was bunk, it's back in US schools and raking in cash.
On January 5, 2022, the CEO of D.A.R.E. America—the oft-mocked punchline of youth drug education—rung the closing bell at the NASDAQ in Times Square.
“It is my great honor to ring the bell for today’s trading session,” said Frank Pegueros, a 26-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department who got his start with DARE back in the ’90s. “The science and evidence-based DARE curriculum has been created in partnership with highly respected institutions, such as Pennsylvania State University, Arizona State University, and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro,” Pegueros said.
If you had any doubts as to whether our society has fully devolved into a Paul Verhoeven plot, this image should put those to rest:
Drug Abuse Resistance Education was once the most popular anti-drug education program in America. At its peak between the 1980s and early 2000s, DARE was operating in nearly 75 percent of America's school districts. Tax filings from the early aughts show DARE’s budget totaled well over $10 million, with much of the funding coming directly from federal, state, and local governments.
DARE’s reign as the go-to drug education for America’s youth fell apart after a series of independent and government studies found a slight hiccup with DARE’s program: It didn’t work.
Research showed that kids who “graduated” from DARE were no less likely to use drugs than kids who didn’t get any drug education whatsoever. Whatever positive effect DARE had on youth attitudes towards drugs were fleeting, at best. Most of the studies from the 1980s and 1990s found that DARE had little to no impact on adolescent drug use, making the program little more than a whitewashing public relations strategy for the Police Brand™.
Some research into DARE found that the whole thing backfired: Kids who went through DARE were more likely to use drugs and be curious about them. What do you expect to happen when you walk into a classroom with a T.G.I. Friday sampler platter full of drugs? It seemed that DARE was unaware of what every parent knows about kids, that when you emphatically tell a child to not do something it only makes them want to do it more.
Uniformed police officers lecturing kids about the dangers of drugs turned out to be a bad idea. DARE’s leadership, largely comprised of LAPD cops, was shocked to hear this news. “I don’t get it," DARE’s executive director said after a scathing 1994 study about DARE was published. "It’s like kicking Santa Claus to me. We’re as pure as the driven snow."
DARE was found to be empirically ineffective quite early on in its life, but that didn’t mean it lost its charm. For all of its flaws, there was a political genius to DARE. By being in favor of DARE, politicians could brand themselves as pro-law enforcement, anti-drug, and pro-saving the children all at the same time—hitting a trifecta of political points. It didn’t matter that DARE was bunk because it was serving a purpose far greater than youth drug education. DARE was en vogue right as both major political parties fell over each other trying to posture as the pro-police, tough on crime party. DARE epitomized “community policing.”
Though kids weren’t really resisting drugs, politicians and the government couldn’t resist DARE. Writing in the Washington Post, Christopher Ingraham noted the Justice Department tried to suppress the evidence against DARE by refusing to publish a study the department had commissioned.
It took some doing for DARE’s reign to finally unravel. The program slowly started to lose federal funding after government reports officially documented its lack of efficacy. DARE’s budget went from over $10 million in 2002 down to $3.5 million by 2012. And that’s about the same time when DARE became a symbol of irony for guys like this:
Fast forward to today. We’re living in the eternal return. What’s old is new again. And DARE is making a big comeback. In April 2022, a DARE press release boasted DARE trained cops will be back in Chicago public schools for the first time in 13 years: “40 Chicago Police Department officers completed an intensive two-week training course and were certified DARE instructors.” (A two week training sounds pretty short?)
According to DARE’s website:
“There are more than 6,000 law enforcement agencies delivering the D.A.R.E. program to 1.2 million K-12 students annually who reside in more than 10,000 communities throughout the United States.”
DARE’s revenue has ballooned back up to over $10 million and DARE America holds $19 million in total assets, according to 2019 tax filings. No longer the beneficiary of huge infusions of federal cash, DARE today is funded through a mix of private donations and local school districts. But, to be sure, some school districts still use state and/or federal money to pay for DARE programming.
How did this happen? If dozens of studies proved DARE didn’t work, how are they still in the drug education business?
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