This is Your Brain On D.A.R.E.

About the author:
Joe Palcsak wrote the above article after his child participated in the DARE program. He was especially offended by the mandatory exclusion of parents from the DARE sessions.

The program is based not on education but on psychological techniques that were originally intended to be used in a therapy environment to allow the subject(s) to open up.

Big Brother has been very busy lately. You can find him in elementary schools across America in the stated capacity of "instructor" in a program dubbed DARE, or Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Begun locally in Los Angeles in 1983, DARE exploded on the scene like a new drug and is now firmly entrenched as the number one anti- drug program in the country. More fifth and sixth-graders now participate in the DARE program than all other drug education programs combined. In 1991 more than 5 million students in over 200,000 classrooms went through the program under the tutelage of more than 13,000 police officers. That's right, police officers. You see, the DARE program is "taught" by the law. Why police officers and not teachers? Ruth Rich, who developed the curriculum, explains that the policeman is the "missing link" in a long line of failed anti-drug programs. But a closer look at the techniques employed in DARE suggest that in this case the officer is simply a more direct agent of the state than the teacher. You see, the DARE instructor doesn't so much "teach" the students as befriend them.

The program is based not on education but on psychological techniques that were originally intended to be used in a therapy environment to allow the subject(s) to open up. DARE officers are never instructed to tell the students not to use drugs. Rather they are to build the child's self-esteem and decision-making skills. Drug usage is merely one decision a child is confronted with.

Ironically this type of "value neutral" or "non-directive" therapy has been demonstrated to be a dismal failure more often than not, encouraging the very behavior it sets out to eliminate. This conclusion is based on research collected by Carl Rogers and Dr. William Coulson, two men who pioneered the techniques in the 1960s. Rogers has outright denounced the therapy and Coulson, who has served on the Technical Advisory Panel on Drug Education Curricula for the U.S. Department of Education, now spends much of his time informing and warning parents, teachers, and school officials of the harm done to children by the DARE program.

Schools that offer DARE first expose children to the program with occasional visits by police officers as early as kindergarten and continuing through fourth grade. These visits set the stage for the core curriculum: seventeen lessons delivered to students in each of the fifth an sixth grades. Before becoming instructors in the program, DARE officers receive 80 hours of instruction in psychological techniques. Coulson, who holds doctorate degrees in both philosophy and psychology from Notre Dame, denounces the training period as woefully inadequate and points out that even if the therapy practiced in the DARE program had worked on adults, it would never work with children who "don't have the reasoning power of adults." He further criticizes the program: "If a child decides to use drugs, the DARE program under the eye of the police has already taught them that they can make their own decisions." He further cautions that the DARE message is all the more dangerous coming from police officers.

The Littlest Agent

To be blunt, what we have here is an open invitation for professional informants to work the tools of their trade on the most trusting, receptive targets they'll ever have a shot at: young, impressionable children.

DARE trainees are instructed that in addition to classroom teaching, they are to spend casual time with the students, befriending them in the hopes that the children will sing like canaries about someone they know who uses drugs. Don't take it from me, take it from the DARE program brief issued in 1991 by the Bureau of Justice Assistance:

"In addition to formal classroom teaching, DARE officers spend time on the playground, in the cafeteria, and at student assemblies, interacting with the students informally. They may organize a soccer match, play basketball or chat with students over lunch. In this way students have an opportunity to become acquainted with the officer as a trusted friend who is interested in their happiness and welfare. Students occasionally tell the officer about problems such as abuse, neglect, alcoholic parents, or relative who use drugs.

DARE succeeds only in allowing the state a firmer foothold into our private lives.

One student who fell for the statist entrapment is 11- year old Crystal Grendell, whose saga was chronicled in a front page story in the Wall Street Journal April 11, 1992. An honor student before she confided to her DARE officer that her parents were growing a small amount of marijuana in their house, she has become a withdrawn "C" student since Mom and Dad's arrest and now "gets scared" when police drive by her house wondering "if something else is going to happen."

Crystal's account of her betrayal of Mom and Dad differs sharply from that of the DARE officer, Chief Gillway. It began when the Chief asked his DARE class if they knew anyone who used drugs. Although Crystal had wished her parents would not smoke marijuana, she had not confronted them with this wish. However, after class that day she confided in the good Chief. He pressed her for details, assuring little Crystal that "nothing would happen to her parents." This assurance is what good Chief Gillway disputes. Crystal vows that knowing what she knows, she would never tell.

Just Say No to DARE

A copy of the DARE instructors' manual could make for extremely interesting reading, and according to the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, local school districts are require to "provide full information about the elements of its drug prevention programs." It seems then that this manual should be made available for any concerned parent to inspect, yet it has remained singularly elusive. Gary Peterson, founder of Parents Against DARE, was refused a copy when he attempted to obtain one. Judy McLemore tried her local DARE officers, local superintendent of education, Alabama DARE training center in Huntsville, Alabama State Board of Education, U.S. Department of Justice, the DARE program developers, and her congressman -- all without success. Gee guys, if all you're doing is trying to help our poor kids steer clear of drugs, why all the secrecy?

DARE backers love to portray parents who oppose the program as drug legalization proponents or even drug users. While a close look at the program certainly reveals that any casual drug user with DARE age children is justified in harboring a bit of paranoia about his/her child's participation in the program, the truth is that most organized opposition has come from the religious right who contend among other things that DARE undermines parental authority (good point) and that an hour spent in school on DARE is one less hour devoted to reading writing and arithmetic (another good point).

No matter what angle you look at DARE from, there are plenty of targets to shoot. For all of its ominous implications, the program could claim some bragging rights in the arena of drug prevention if it could point to some demonstrable proof that DARE actually works at what it is ostensibly designed to do: curb drug usage among young people. As the program enters its second decade, however, the research and the studies are trickling and rather than confirming DAREs effectiveness, they almost unanimously confirm the fears that Dr. Coulson lectures against. Studies conducted at the University of Kentucky, the University of North Carolina, government agencies, and a group under contract to DARE America, show, if anything, increases in drug usage by DARE students in relationship to non-DARE students. M. Amos Clifford wrote in the California Prevention Network Journal, "...every expert prevention specialist I know... without a single exception... believes that DARE should be ranked somewhere between a sham and mediocrity."

DARE fails at its stated objectives. The very people who pioneered the techniques employed in the program have long since admitted the failure of the techniques. DARE succeeds only in allowing the state a firmer foothold into our private lives. And the pawns employed are our children, a la East Germany and Soviet Russia. To me, this makes DARE the most nigHTMarish manifestation of citizen mind control on a large scale yet. 1984 is almost a decade in the past...

"Who denounced you?" said Winston. "It was my little daughter," said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. "She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying and nipped off to the patrols the very next day."
George Orwell (from 1984)

"I can't blame Crystal for doing what she did. She told the truth when questioned by the authorities. That's what I've always taught her to do."
Mother of DARE student Crystal Grendell after being arrested in a drug raid based on information provided by Crystal to her DARE officer. (Wall Street Journal. April 1992)

"He's my son and I love him. He found it [marijuana] and did what he had to do."
Jerry Herrera, father of DARE student Jouquin Herrera who tipped off police.
(Rocky Mountain News, September 1991)