USA - Students learn how to say no to drugs

[Abrad]

Students learn how to say no to drugs
By ANGELINE TAYLOR ataylor@hernandotoday.com
Published: Apr 30, 2006
http://www.hernandotoday.com/news/MGBUB4D5OME.html
SPRING HILL — It’s not simple to just say no to drugs, according to Hernando County Sheriff Richard Nugent.

You have to give students ways to say no and educate them on what they are saying yes to, Nugent said.

Nugent and Deputies Carlo Daleo Jr., and Rob Pacchiarotti congratulated fifth- and sixth-graders at Spring Hill Christian Academy last Wednesday after the two groups completed weeks of learning about the dangers of drugs and gangs.

The fifth-graders took part in D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance program), the ongoing program that has been administered throughout the nation’s schools. Last week Spring Hill Christian Academy got their turn at the specialized training.

D.A.R.E. students received class lessons on how to resist peer pressure and how to live drug and violence-free lives.

However, this year, the Hernando County Sheriff’s department launched a newer program to educate older students on the ways to avoid drugs and crime. That program is called G.R.E.A.T. or Gang Resistance Education and Training.

“G.R.E.A.T. picks up on a lot of the principles of D.A.R.E.,” Nugent said. “They use decision-making models. They use tools on how to make good choices.”

Nugent said by role playing and going through decision-making models, the group of young people will be able to make the proper decisions when they are away from their good role models like their mothers and fathers.

“The problem is not as simple as saying no (to drugs),” Nugent said. “You have to give them ways to say no.”

According to Nugent, there are about eight different ways to say no. Without prompting, the students remembered them all but that’s not what impressed students the most.

“I learned all the ways to say not to drugs (like) the cold shoulder,” said sixth-grader Shalani Kooner, 12. “I was surprised to learn that a lot of women join gangs, too.”

Sixth-grader Luke May said one of the statistics he learned during the 13-week class surprised him the most.

“If you’re in a gang, you’re 60 percent more likely to be killed,” May said. “A lot of times you suffer the consequences just joining.”

All fifth- and sixth-graders who participated in the program received certificates. Sixth-grader Kayla James was named the winner of the essay contest.

Because of James’ win, she will join other school winners to compete for the countywide competition.

Reporter Angeline Taylor can be contacted at (352) 544-5289.

[sands of time]

I don't understand all this peer pressure stuff. No one has ever encouraged swim to try drugs, and swim has never seen anyone else encouraged to try drugs.

[Sky Walker]

[QUOTE=sands of time]I started smokin mary jane because everyone I knew did so I tried it.[QUOTE]

This seems highly contradictory, are you sure you have never seen peer pressure at work? There is no shame in it, it's an immensely powerful force, so powerful infact that some victims brains seem to eventually repress the memory

[bewilderment]

I was just now reading an article related to DARE before I hopped over to the forums and noticed this thread. The article that I just read cracked me up:

My daughter wrote an essay for her sixth-grade class this week titled "Just Say No." The occasion was a visit from the DARE officer at her elementary school.

She has been through DARE training in the past - the acronym stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education - but I hadn't really paid too much attention. This time around, she wrote an essay about it on the home computer. It was still up on the screen as I sat down to look something up. So I read it.

"DARE has really helped me decide not to do drugs," it begins. "If it weren't for DARE, my life probably would have been horrible, because if somebody would've told me to do drugs, I probably would have said yes, because I was uneducated about drugs, and curious. Now that I have gone through the DARE program, I know I will NEVER do them, not even once. I know what a drug is, the names of them, and what awful things they do to your body."
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"Before DARE, I didn't even know what a drug was. I thought that they were only medicine, like Tylenol and Advil. I didn't know that they were terrible goodbyes to your normal life, like meth and marijuana."

Yikes!

After the initial shock wore off, I realized this didn't really mean she was one step away from a life on the streets. She's not only a top student, but also a competitive gymnast who works out at her sport so many hours each day she likely wouldn't have time to be exposed to drugs.

But that's the point of the DARE program. Every kid needs to learn about the danger of illicit drugs. As a parent, you simply can't bank on the idea that your kid is too smart or too busy to be touched.

Chandler - unlike several other Valley cities - continues to operate a strong DARE program. Phoenix, Mesa and Scottsdale have cut or eliminated their DARE units in recent years.

Critics contend that there is no significant difference of drug use from kids who have and haven't been through the program. They argue that the required police resources are better used battling crime on the streets.

But that thinking hasn't taken root in Chandler. In fact, the president of the Arizona DARE Officers Association is a Chandler officer, Dave Parsons. The organization's secretary is another Chandler cop, Robin Valenzuela. "Officer Robin" administers the program at my daughter's school.

The next day at breakfast, instead of burying her head in the comics, her usual morning routine, my daughter was reading the front page.

It was Part 3 of the Republic's series this week on meth.

I smiled and thought that, at least in Chandler, I'm glad "Officer Robin" is still on the job.

I find it ironic that education actually made swim want to try drugs even more. Swim first tried drugs when she was 13 years old and the drugs that she tried were valium and tylenol 3's w/codeine. She was taking a health class at the time which was focusing on drug abuse. They got around to talking about pharmaceuticals being abused and this piked little swim's interest. Later that night after her mother went to bed, she rummaged through her mother's pocketbook and took out all the prescription bottles and carried them over to the book to compare notes. It just so happened that her mother had prescriptions for valium, xanax, codeine, and hydrocodone. She swallowed a valium and a tylenol 3 and stashed other pills away for later...thus began little swim's drug use. That health book was an excellent resource. She slept through the rest of the health course because she was bored during school and would take valium to self-medicate her social anxiety. She still got an A though because she loved that book.

[Creeping Death]

DARE is a shitty name. With all the fear of drugs that kids have, it takes more courage to try drugs than to stay away.

So they should change the name of their program to "Be A Little Punk Bitch".

[Cure20]

I tried saying no to drugs, they just never said no to me!

[Nagognog2]

If the dice had been rolled a little differently, perhaps we'd have programs in schools trying to convince kids to take drugs. That not taking drugs would ruin their lives by interfering with their education....Oh wait! We do. Ritalin and Adderal etc. These are being pushed by peer-pressure applied to the parents - while the kids are told not to take drugs. This gets so confusing.

I raised a teenager who followed me home one afternoon. He was a latch-key kid whose dad had run off with a model, and his mom worked 16 hour days as a cocktail waitress in an airport lounge. I helped him do his homework. Held his hand and listened to his problems. All the "dad" things one is supposed to do to raise a kid right. And he wanted to know all about drugs. So I told him the truth, and he decided to experiment. And experiment he did! With molecules most can't pronounce (bad dad). All the while the D.A.R.E. program went on around him in the school. My kid knew more about drugs than any of the victims of the DARE brainwashing.

He graduated from a major university and now has a job as a research micro-biologist for a major pharmaceutical company. Those dangerous drugs sparked an interest in sciences which dad certainly encouraged. I DARE say that if my kid didn't learn the truth and explore as he did, he'd be likely to have persued his other option regards a vocation: Managing an over-priced restaurant in a lily-white suburb of Boston for little pay and tenuous benefits.

Dare to resist D.A.R.E. Legalize truth in schools.

[Silence_Inc]

in our countrey there has been a survey - and the outcome proves that trying to keep students from trying drugs by giving these resistance programs they are more easily getting interested in these"so called" dangerous substances. it has a reverse tolernace you could say

[Lunar Loops]

This from jointogether.org:

Popular Prevention Programs Lack Nuance, Research
May 16, 2006

Many of the drug-prevention programs typically found in schools fail to jibe with the reality experienced by youth and are rarely supported by solid outcomes research, the Los Angeles Times reported May 15.
Researchers say that cookie-cutter prevention programs that cast all drugs as "bad" are confusing to kids, especially when such messages run up against issues like casual alcohol use in their own families. "When I told my parents what I learned in [school], that drinking was bad, they said they knew that, but that a drink once in a while was OK," said 9th-grader Mariana Kouloumian. "My parents know how much alcohol they can handle. They only drink socially -- and wouldn't drink and drive."
"Oversimplification is just one reason most school-based drug-prevention programs don't work," said researcher David Hanson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "The decisions kids face are more nuanced than most drug programs make them appear."
Past studies have shown that only 35 percent of public schools and 13 percent of private schools use prevention programs with a proven track record of effectiveness. Some experts worry that popular programs like DARE -- which has received up to $1 billion in public funding but has never been proven effective -- could actually harm young children by encouraging them to see themselves as potential drug users, or by making drug use seem more prevalent than it actually is.
The No Child Left Behind Act requires every school to provide drug prevention, and says those that use federal funding must adopt programs that have demonstrated effectiveness. But many schools use local funds to support programs like DARE, which remains in about 70 percent of school districts.
Broader societal trends seem to have more effect on youth drug use than prevention programs. And DARE is not the only program that has been shown to have little or no impact on youth drug use: federal studies on the popular Families and Schools Together (FAST) program and the Reconnecting Youth program also have shown poor or mixed results.
Hanson said most prevention programs "tell kids things they will later find out aren't true, like alcohol is a gateway to drugs and will seduce you into trying more dangerous substances. Also, by saying all alcohol is bad, they send kids home thinking that if their parents have a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with their pizza, they are abusing drugs."
"If a child's father happens to tend bar, they come home and ask why he's a drug dealer," he added. "Then what happens when the child sees the off-duty DARE officer having a beer at the local bowling alley?"
The DARE program has recently been revamped to focus more on good decision making, avoidance skills, and resisting peer pressure. And other experts dismiss concerns that educating young kids about drugs could actually increase the odds of drug use. "Early and often. That's our cardinal rule," said Judy Cushing, past president of the National Family Partnership, founder of the Red Ribbon Week campaign. "It's never too early to tell kids what's healthy and what isn't to put in their bodies."
Experts say that schools need to carefully choose the prevention program that's right for their community and culture, implement it according to the program design, and resist the urge to exaggerate the dangers of drug use.

[Powder_Reality]

This article is about 4 years old, but it's an interesting read. It's from the newspaper Fort Worth Weekly.

City's No Longer Taking the DARE

When I was in the seventh grade in 1971, my elementary school brought one of the local police officers to our classroom to lecture us about the evils of illegal drugs. Granted, we didn't really know what illegal drugs were at this point.


Drugs were something that hippies did, and given that we didn't see any hippies at Holy Cross School, we didn't pay much attention to this cop standing before us. But then he said something that made me and my friends sit up and take notice. "There was a young high school student," the cop intoned breathlessly, "who took LSD and woke up a few days later in California."

I couldn't believe what I just heard. Take a pill and wind up in California. I'd never been to California, but I'd seen it on tv. I knew there were beaches and surfers and Disneyland. Swimming pools, movie stars. So when the cop told me that taking drugs might cause me to wind up in California, I thought there might be something to what this guy was talking about. Police officer dude, count me in.

It was after that cop came into our classroom that my friends and I first started talking about drugs. The more we talked, and the more we looked around, the fewer reasons we found not to take drugs. The intended effect of the drug education -- to curb our desires through scare tactics -- had instead piqued our curiosity. That summer, with pot we got from someone's older brother, five best friends began getting stoned. Most of us would do so for the next 20 years. Over the years, some of us even tried to get to California.

I was reminded of my drug education last week when Fort Worth Police Chief Ralph Mendoza announced that he will be eliminating the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program in the Fort Worth public schools. Mendoza cited the fact that DARE failed to reduce narcotic use among youths. He thought his officers would be better used in finding criminals and putting them in jail, instead of drilling fifth-graders on the evils of marijuana.
The decision by the Fort Worth police is part of a trend that could spell the end of the DARE program as we know it. Numerous studies have shown that DARE has little impact in reducing drug use among those who have taken the program. At the same time, in the post-9-11 world, police departments are facing increased responsibilities while cities are slashing budgets. Los Angeles recently cut its DARE funding in half, and Salt Lake City got rid of the program entirely. Dozens of cities, large and small, have gutted or completely abolished DARE programs in the past few years.

DARE was started in 1983 by the Los Angeles Police, with twin intentions. On the one hand, it was an educational program designed to teach young children how to say "no" in the face of peer pressure to use drugs. On the other hand, DARE was also a police-community relations program, designed to bring police officers into schools, to be seen by parents (who are voters and taxpayers) as real, caring people who do more than write traffic tickets and beat people with billy clubs. Tarrant County District Clerk and Republican operative Tom Wilder recognized the political side of DARE in the early 1990s, when he took an obscure Haltom City DARE coordinator named David Williams and helped get him elected Tarrant County sheriff. Williams had little real law enforcement experience and few ideas on how to run the sheriff's office, but he was against drugs, and that seemed good enough for voters.

Over the years, 80 percent of school districts in the country bought into the DARE promise. In large school districts, the program cost more than $1 million a year to implement. At a cost of $20-50 per child taking the 17-week course, and the fact that police officers were being taken off the street to coordinate the programs, the expectations that the program might actually work were reasonable. But study after study -- including ones by the U.S. Surgeon General, the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education -- found that taking the DARE program made no difference in the incidence of drug use later in the child's life. In Minnesota, a study found that students were more likely to use marijuana in the sixth grade if they had been in the DARE program in the fifth grade. Maybe they told those Minnesota kids the story about waking up in California.

Last week at D. McCrae Elementary, the Fort Worth program -- started in 1987 -- held one of its last graduations of DARE kids. Many parents and educators bemoaned the loss of DARE, and Fort Worth Police Officer D.W. Frazier, DARE officer and trainer for the past seven years, disputed the findings of the studies. He also vowed he'd be back. "This is God's work," Frazier said. "It will always be in my heart while riding bike patrol."

But within the crowd at McCrae was evidence of the failure of the program. Antonio, a ninth-grader from Polytechnic High School, there to watch a family member graduate, said he took the DARE training when he was in the fifth grade. By the time he reached high school, he was smoking a dime bag every day with his friends and eventually flunked out of school. His parents sent him to boot camp, and Antonio said he is now drug free. He said he still thinks the DARE program is a good thing but admitted that he knew a bunch of kids who were smoking pot in the sixth grade despite attending DARE a year earlier. "I wanted to try a new thing," Antonio said. "When you are older, you want to experiment and see how things are."

And, in a nutshell, that was the problem with DARE. The message focused almost entirely on peer pressure and scare tactics. Once teens saw their friends experimenting with drugs without full-blown addiction, researchers found, the kids would throw out all of the DARE lessons. "Once that happens, they feel they have been lied to," said Donald Lyman, a University of Kentucky researcher who has studied DARE, "and they reject the whole message."

My daughter took the DARE program last year as a fifth-grader at Luella Merrett Elementary. I knew she had little clue at her age as to what drug abuse was and how it would affect someone's life. But the things she did pick up bordered on absurdity. In one lesson, she was told by a DARE officer that her first drug experience would likely be at the hands of a gang member at knife-point. I told her it would be more likely be at half-time of a high school football game, with friends and no weapons involved.

There's been no decision on which replacement program the Fort Worth ISD might adopt. Districts that have already shed DARE generally are using programs that move the drug-resistance education to middle school and high school. The curriculum is being handled by health/science teachers and counselors, with some input from law enforcement.

But if educators are serious about drug abuse prevention, a change in the mindset that the DARE program fostered for 30 years is needed. DARE told students about most of the reasons for drug abuse -- peer pressure, low self-esteem, parental abuse -- but had a blind spot about the most obvious reason: pleasure. Jonathan Zimmerman, a history professor at New York University who has studied alcohol and drug education programs, believes that schools must be more honest with students if any of these programs are to work.

"Most adults probably fear that any acknowledgment of pleasure will increase the allure of these activities," Zimmerman recently wrote. "But students already know the joy of sex, alcohol, and drugs. They know it from film and television; they know it from popular music; they know it, sometimes, from their own experience. What they don't know -- or don't understand --are the dangers that these pleasures can bring. But we'll never persuade our children to take heed of the dangers if we continue to lie or dissemble about the pleasures."

Staff writer Jeff Prince contributed to this story.

Note: It was a feel-good program that didn't talk about feeling good.
Newshawk: Dan McGraw
Source: Fort Worth Weekly (TX)
Author: Dan McGraw
Published: June 13, 2002
Copyright: 2002 New Times, Inc.

Reputation Comments on this post:

interesting background and history. thanks for sharing

[Powder_Reality]

DARE Program Graduates 150
by Ryan Vander Wal, (28 Jun 2006) Ponoka News Alberta
Graduation is a momentous time in the lives of most young people. Over 150 Diamond Willow and St. Augustine Grade 6 students have just graduated from a program meant to save their lives. The DARE program stands for drug abuse resistance education.

The DARE Program is a ten week course that is taught to the local students by School Resource officer Perry Garrett. If you have young kids in school in Ponoka chances are they know him as "PJ", which they take the opportunity to yell at Garrett any chance they get when they see him out in public. Garrett says the message from DARE is strong but important one.

"We try and support them to continue their lives as non-users. The kids already know a lot of reasons not to do drugs, but we provide them with the education they need to stay that way," said Garrett. "We educate kids about the short and long term affect of all kinds of drugs from tobacco and caffeine all the way to the harder illicit drugs. We teach the kids to try and use the DARE model for decision making whenever they face a difficult situation or choice."

The model for decision making also uses the DARE acronym, define, assess, respond, and evaluate. The students are taught various techniques on how to best avoid, and if necessary, deal with the drug situations they may face day to day. Students are taught how to best handle the possible back alley drug dealer situations they might encounter. Students are also taught about legal drugs that are marketed directly to them. The fact that alcohol and nicotine advertising are geared towards them is not lost on the kids.

"These kids get most of their information from internet and TV," said Garrett. "We teach them about advertising and marketing. We ask the kids to think for themselves about who the companies are really targeting. The kids realize that if I'm running a tobacco company who do I advertise to. They learn that the average age to start smoking is 12 years old."

While the DARE training is an excellent program that is provided to all Grade 6 students, there is no follow up course during the impressionable junior or senior high years. Garret says that is end of the DARE information for students.

"No, this is about it unfortunately. The program ends after Grade 6, it is all the program that the money and time will permit," said Garrett. "It would be great to have a chance to see them later in their schooling and have a refresher course."

As usual with any school class or activity parental support is vital to the success of students. Garrett says the parents from this year have been excellent.

"The DARE programs get great parental support. We get praise in return from most of the parents too, they are truly great supporters of DARE."

Garrett, who obviously has a great rapport with the kids, says he notices another benefit to the DARE program.

"I really feel the one on one experience between the kids and a police officer is good for the community. It takes away from the apprehension that may exist for kids who don't know an officer," said Garrett. "Some kids see the uniform and have pre-conceived notions about the police. But when we have the chance to see the kids on their turf it's easier to develop relationships. I believe having a community full of kids who know a police officer on a first name basis can make a world of difference."


*Where to begin? They fail to mention any of the specific things that DARE teaches their "students". In one article that I already posted, a father mentioned about how when he was in DARE, he was told about a kid who dropped LSD and woke up a few days later in California. This is education? This is what we should be teaching our kids? They also fail to mention that statistically, students that graduate from the DARE program are just as likely to use drugs as students who never took the program. It's a waste of the school's money to hire these guys. Just buy each of the kids a copy of "Reefer Madness". That'll teach them just as much as the DARE program does. Articles like this are potentiators to starting a war on drugs in Canada. Kids aren't stupid, they're going to realize sooner or later that the friendly DARE officer was lieing to them.

[Powder_Reality]

As most of us all know, D.A.R.E. is quite notorious for bending the truth. This is a thread to post what kind of things you were taught in school from D.A.R.E. and other Drug Education presentations.

When SWIM was in school, I believe it was grade 8 or 9, a day was put aside so the entire student-body could sit in the auditorium and listen to local officers teach them about drugs and crime. SWIM stayed home that day because he didn't want to have to listen to it. When SWIM arrived at school the next day, his friends told him about all the crap they heard at the lecture. One of the stories was interesting to SWIM. Apparently the officers taught the school how marijuana gets laced. It goes something like this: one person buys some marijuana and laces it with cocaine, because that's how he likes it. Then that person sells his friend some of the marijuana and his friend laces it with crystal meth, because that's how he likes it. Then that person sells his friend some of the marijuana and his friend laces it with LSD, because that's how he likes it. Then that guy sells it it SWIY, and SWIY gets to smoke weed that's laced with cocaine, meth, and LSD.

SWIM never realized that you could smoke LSD. SWIM learns something new everyday. :P

[Abrad]

Total bullshit you CANNOT smoke LSD.
I really am glad I went to school in a country where nothing like that ever happened,

[quili]

The days of DARE. Swim was only in fourth or fifth grade when she had DARE, so it's kind of hard to remember. They definitely go for the right age group. Swim's brother is now in fifth grade. He has so many beliefs that he thinks he knows for sure, it's funny. Because swim can see directly where they came from, something like DARE, something his teacher told him, swim's parents, swim, etc. Anyway- swim doesn't remember specifics like that- she just remembers being pretty convinced about the severity and dangerousness with all drugs. But here are some funny things she has heard from other people- swim's friend read a book that said: "Crack leads to prostitution." That's a funny way to put that, swim thinks. Swim's roommate last year (inexperienced and very lacking in drug knowledge) thought that swim was going to kill her by chopping her into little pieces or jump out the window because swim was on shrooms. Another one: swim's roommate's best friend was spewing statistics like "after you do shrooms three times you can be put in a mental hospital." She also told swim that she's never known anyone to do hard drugs and be successful at lifea, that she didn't think swim was going to graduate from college because she does drugs, and that doing drugs inherently suggests that something is wrong in your life- or swim's life- but not swim's close black friend who grew up in a small town with less money, because what else is she going to do. Swim was shocked and furious and literally completely ignored her existence the rest of the year. Of course when you watch CSI or whatever those dectective-y shows are all the time and all you know about drugs is what you see on television- like a "crazy party" where someone gets killed by someone on drugs or has a seizure, etc- you are going to be scared of them, but seriously... swim hates how people can have such strong opinions about something they know next to nothing about. Ridiculous.

[Nagognog2]

It should be a felony crime to subject kids in the public education system to outright lies. Imagine what would happen if you were hired as a teacher, and you then taught the kids in a 4th grade class that Hitler was a kind man, the Jews started World War II, and the Holocaust is nothing but lies spread by the Zionist Occupied Government. You'd be lucky to make the county line!

[Jimmeh]

In any drugs talk I've had it's mainly been factual information, but factual information can be shocking to children when presented in a certain way. I remember being shocked at the horrors of alcohol when I was 11 or 12. I mean it "Impairs judgement and coordination", "Blurs vision and affects balance", "Heavy drinking can result in addiction and liver failure". They commented on other drugs such as heroin and coke as being addictive and "not worth it for the buzz". Of course I agreed, I was 11 or 12 and quite sheltered, I didn't know what a "buzz" was, I hadn't even started masturbating at that stage! The cannabis argument was the it damaged your lungs and brain and that "even one joint could do damage".
After we'd completed a 10 week course on drugs(one lesson a week) aa Garda(Irish police officer) came in and gave us all certificates. I was quite proud

When I was 14 I was on a religious retreat(I'm Agnostic bordering on Aethiest now, but at the time I still considered myself Catholic, as was normal for Irish people) there was a guy talking about issues such as sex and drugs. He kept going on about this "double sixes" affect with cannabis. He basically said that cannabis can cause memory lapses and loss of concentration years after someone has smoked pot, and it was like rolling double sixes on two dice - rare and unpredictable, but it happens....

When I was 15/16 there was another drugs talk in my school. I don't remember it much. But I think it was the usual crap, weed causes mental illness, our young bodies can't handle alcohol, E tabs are dodgy etc.

Thing is every one of these was with really friendly people that I genuinely liked. It's purposefully manipulative, like, "this guy's cool and he doesn't do drugs! I wanna be like him!".....

This all stayed with me until I was almost 17. When I finally started drinking I started to think about how alcohol could necessarily be safer than other drugs, it didn't make logical sense that only one drug in the world could be safe when used in moderation. The internet answered a lot of my questions and now, while all I've experimented with has been Salvia and some low doses of OTC medication, I feel I'm more enlightened and will pursue many more drugs in my life.

[greyskylullaby]

hahaha swim has a good DARE story

when dare came to my school after the officers talked about marijuana, they passed around 2 joints so everyone could "see what they looked like" the officers said if they don't get both back at the end of the presentation, they would search everyone in the room.

after they were passed around 3 were returned.


of course the presentations were full of bullshit besides that, cops and orginizations only know as much about drugs as they hear from people. the only real way to know much about drug culteure is to live it, and they don't.

it is especially bad when they try and describe what it feels like to be under the influence. you CANNOT describe what something feels like if you've never felt it.

[vantranist]

Well i also had DARE in like 4-5th grade, but in my 9th grade health class my teacher told us that she knows sevreal people who took LSD and now they all think thewir a cup of orange juice or somthing and if they fall over they will spill.

[psyche]

Well ofcourse we don't have DARE in Finland but alikes we sadly do. I remember promising myself I wouldn't never lay my hands on those dirty needles where all suffering in the world has begun. I don't remember what they "facts" did they state, but as retrospective I find funny that we were shown a typical narcotics room. It was dark, messy, all around was laying needles and folio. The unbelievably simple message was that your room will turn to this and you'll be that unidentified thing in the dark corner slicing yourself with a cheesecloth. How could anyone intelligent human being possibly believe that if you once use some substance it'll define your destiny and never mind your eternal soul being destroyed.

[old hippie 56]

Swim too old for D.A.R.E., but when one of his friends kid was in the second grade, they gave the usual BS talk. The cop was showing papers, pipes, and other assorted smoking aids. The kid told the cop that them Zig-Zags was the kind of papers his dad used on his green tobacco at night. Being a small rural town, the cop paid a visit to the kid dad. The moral of the story is don't do drugs in front of your kids, they talk too damn much.

[Bajeda]

hahaha, I remember D.A.R.E. back in the day. We watched some cartoon with some recognizable characters in it like Garfield and a bunch of other popular cartoons, though I don't remember them. All I could think of (this was 5th grade) was that marijuan and lsd sounded really cool and I wondered if they were as cool as the video made them seem. good job D.A.R.E., use a colourful almost psychedelic video to teach about how bad drugs are...

[Police Officer]

I teach DARE, and I find it sad that it's such a joke. I take it very seriously because I have to deal with the children of meth addicted parents everyday.

[Powder_Reality]

SWIM agrees that it's not right for children to have to deal with addict parents, but that doesn't have anything to do with DARE. SWIM agrees that drugs can have a terrible effect on someone's life if used improperly and irresponsibly, but does that justify spreading lies to small children in an attempt to scare them away from drugs? It's a statistical fact that children who take DARE in school are just as likely to do drugs as those who don't. In most of the cases that SWIM has read on the internet, people say that after they took DARE in school, they were more intrigued to try drugs.

Since DARE programs seem to have no impact on children, SWIM believes that schools should stop wasting so much money on the program and start teaching scientifc facts about drugs (and not to young children, more towards junior-high students). We can't stop teenagers from doing drugs. A large percentage of teenagers enjoy altering their conciousness, and obviously these anti-drug programs aren't going to stop them from doing so.

In SWIM's opinion, schools should teach scientific facts about drugs in order to educate, not to try to scare them away from drugs. If students know the real facts about drugs, they can make educated decisions about whether they want to experiment or not, and being educated about them could help save lives. What if a student tried marijuana (as many do) and realized that all the "facts" that the DARE officer told him about marijuana were false. He might start to think that all the other "facts" that the DARE officer told him were false as well. Maybe he would think that meth was completely harmless as well. This could lead to the student using the drug irresponsibly and developing a serious addiction.

So although SWIM believes that students should be educated about drugs, he doesn't think that they should have to be subjected to being fed lies and half-truths about drugs. They're smarter than that.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Hell, yeah... exactly

[pokeymcsmot421]

we all find it sad that d.a.r.e is such a joke also.....believe me.

Maybe if they didnt continue to lie, makeup statistics, quote disproven studies, and use scare tactics it wouldnt be such a damn joke. I mean lets face it, noone likes being lied to and manipulated.

Drugs like meth are bad enough where if you guys just came with the straight truth, you'd have a much better case than attempting to demonize all drugs on the same level. A distinction between hard and soft drugs is absolutely neccessary, is it not?

The D.A.R.E program has been proven to be one of the most inneffective tactics ever used against the war on drugs, and will continue to be as long as they dont straighten up.

By the way what did I learn in d.a.r.e, well I learned Marijuana causes lung cancer (it doesnt, run a search), that heroin causes aids, psychedelics make you see your favorite cartoon characters, and that drug dealers will attack you chase you down and force you to do there drugs.

More importantly what I learned from D.A.R.E. was that my government is completely full of shit, immoral, has no problem lying to children, and is generally not to be trusted.........definatly not the message your shootin for.

[wednesday]

Originally Posted by Police Officer

I teach DARE, and I find it sad that it's such a joke. I take it very seriously because I have to deal with the children of meth addicted parents everyday.

it is a joke simply because when i was in the dare program they didn't give us facts and they treated us like babies
you are trying to make our minds up for us
thats trying to play with free will
even the most powerful beings in the world cannot truely bend free will
only use tactics to scare
how would you feel being lied to about something the whole time you grow up and then finding out the truth
i completely agree with a drug program the more kids know about them the better choices they can make
but it has to be just that a choice
just tell them the truth you will get a much better response