Letters

From the June 1995 issue

DARE Tactics

Jeff Elliott's article on DARE ("Drug Prevention Placebo," Mar.) illustrates a problem that has plagued drug abuse prevention efforts--the tendency to support programs based on how well they fit society's current assumptions about illicit drugs without regard for any evidence on their actual effectiveness. With the current emphasis on policing and increased punitiveness, it is not surprising that a drug education curriculum implemented by police is so popular. As long as a program such as DARE fits popular concepts of what drugs do and why people use them, few will question whether the program really works.

The "boomerang effect" which plagues DARE and many other drug education efforts is the predictable result of their use of what Arnold Trebach has called "prophylactic lies"--exaggerations of drug dangers which are intended to scare kids away from drugs. When they are first told those lies in elementary school, our children believe them and become motivated young drug warriors. But as they grow older, their own experience and that of their friends exposes those lies for what they are. They see that some of the best students in their school smoke marijuana without any sign of brain damage or progression to heroin. They learn that some of their friends use cocaine occasionally without any sign of becoming hopeless addicts. Having discovered that their teachers and parents are liars where drugs are concerned, they can no longer trust anything they have been taught about drugs. This leaves them with little reason not to try drugs.

We need to start paying attention to the need for evaluation of drug education curricula. We also need to start telling the truth in drug education. If we don't, our efforts to solve the problem of drug abuse will only serve to make the problem worse.

David F. Duncan, Dr. P.H.

Center for Alcohol and

Addiction Studies

Brown University

Providence, RI

The DARE program, like the Partnership for a Drug- Free America and other anti- drug groups, has been censured for telling lies about marijuana. A DARE instructor in Los Angeles was quoted in the Downtown News as saying that marijuana use leads to heroin use--obviously based on the never-proven "gateway" theory. And teachers who have attended DARE sessions have quoted the officer running the session saying, "I can't tell you that smoking pot causes brain damage....But that's what it does."

The DARE program is clearly a menace that seriously misinforms children about drugs and is willing to censor any who oppose them.

Andrew Williams

Rockville, MD

Last fall I told Jeff Elliott I had not yet seen an accurate news account of the Research Triangle Institute's (RTI) study of DARE. Regrettably, that remains true today, even after publication of Mr. Elliott's article.

DARE used my 1987 evaluation to justify its national expansion, but that was a burden my preliminary study was not designed to carry. Contrary to Mr. Elliott's insinuation, I am fully aware of the study's limitations and listed them in my article. Better- funded studies came later. Some show DARE to be effective, some do not.