DARE to Look at the Evidence!

We must have Drug Abuse Resistance Education…I am proud of your work. It has played a key role in saving thousands of lives and futures.

Speaking at the 30th DARE Training Conference, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was enthusiastic and strongly supportive of DARE, the program started in Los Angeles in 1983 that uses police officers to give young children messages about staying drug free and resisting peer pressure.

And what do our excellent colleagues at GMU’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy say about DARE?

D.A.R.E. is listed under “What doesn’t work?” on our Review of the Research Evidence. 

Rosenbaum summarized the research evidence on D.A.R.E. by titling his 2007 Criminology and Public Policy article “Just say no to D.A.R.E.” As Rosenbaum describes, the program receives over $200 million in annual funding, despite little or no research evidence that D.A.R.E. has been successful in reducing adolescent drug or alcohol use. As Rosenbaum (2007: 815) concludes “In light of consistent evidence of ineffectiveness from multiple studies with high validity, public funding of the core D.A.R.E. program should be eliminated or greatly reduced. These monies should be used to fund drug prevention programs that, based on rigorous evaluations, are shown to be effective in preventing drug use.”

A systematic review by West and O’Neal (2004) examined 11 published studies of D.A.R.E. and reached similar conclusions. D.A.R.E. has little or no impact on drug use, alcohol use, or tobacco use. They concluded that ““Given the tremendous expenditures in time and money involved with D.A.R.E., it would appear that continued efforts should focus on other techniques and programs that might produce more substantial effects” (West & O’Neal, 2004: 1028).

Recent reformulations of the D.A.R.E. program have not shown successful results either. For example, the Take Charge of your Life program, delivered by D.A.R.E. officers was associated with significant increases in alcohol and cigarette use by program participants compared to a control group (Sloboda et al., 2009).

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