"Just say no!" "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?" These catch-phrases should be familiar to us, not only as part of our popular culture, but also an integral part of our crusade to prevent and deter drug use in this country. Included with these different sayings, is also a long list of different prevention programs, taught to nearly all elementary schoolchildren who attend public schools. Among these many programs is D.A.R.E. or Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Despite recent evidence which questions D.A.R.E.'s success at turning away children from drugs, it is still being implemented in schools across this country. With this in mind, D.A.R.E.'s success at expanding its program can be attributed to the fact that much of the public wants to do something to stop the drug problem, and that abandoning the program would be admitting defeat in the war on drugs. First conceived in 1983 by Los Angeles Police Officer Glen Levant as a response to President Ronald Reagan's crackdown on drugs, D.A.R.E. was started by the Los Angeles Police Department and the L.A. School District. Now, D.A.R.E. is the standard anti-drug curriculum throughout the country and is found in seventy percent of the nation's public school districts. The program can also be found in more than 30 countries and in all United States Department of Defense Schools. As of 1997, the program will receive approximately $750 million, eighty percent ($600 million) of which will come from federal, state and local governments. The base of the D.A.R.E. curriculum consists of seventeen weekly lessons taught in the fifth or sixth grade, and are taught by uniformed police officers who have gone through training by the D.A.R.E. program. The topics covered in the classes include not only drugs, but also alcohol, gangs, and self-esteem. The officers discuss these various subjects and also give out homework assignments to reinforce the material that has already been discussed. The growth in D.A.R.E. can be traced not only to the initial push by the Reagan Administration to crackdown on drug use, but also by a trend which indicates that drug use by adolescents has risen in the past few years. According to the University of Colorado's Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, since 1991, adolescent drug use has increased by more than 30 percent, and the number of eighth graders who have said to try marijuana has tripled. An even more chilling statistic, is that roughly sixty percent of all federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses. With the rise in the number of adolescents using drugs, which ultimately clogs up jail cells and curtails overall economic productivity, D.A.R.E. is seen as a method to prevent and deter young people from trying drugs in the first place. This program, in essence, seems to placate the fears of those who believe that building more prisons for drug offenders is not the answer, while at the same time it appeals to those who see an increased police presence as one way to stymie the efforts of drug dealers trying to "push" drugs on our children. The popularity of D.A.R.E. is also seen in the rapid growth of the program and its long list of influential supporters. For example, President Clinton recently declared April 9th "National D.A.R.E. Day" (D.A.R.E. America). In doing so, he said that "Every American should reinforce D.A.R.E.'s efforts by accepting the responsibility to fight drugs and violence" (D.A.R.E. America). He also reiterated and backed D.A.R.E.'s pledge to expand into "every middle school in our nation by the year 2001." D.A.R.E. has also been lauded by Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey as a tool to fight the rising amount of drug use by young people. Supporters also sight individual examples of D.A.R.E. graduation ceremonies which have produced numerous happy faces among children who celebrate amid all the D.A.R.E. regalia posted inside a school gymnasium, as well as the happy faces on the parents and educators who believe that they are doing something which will ultimately help the nation's children. All of aforementioned statistics and testimonials paint the picture of our nation trying to regain the upper hand in the war on drugs- a war which has cost many people their lives, and landed many others in jail. After all, who is opposed to teaching children about the potential dangers that drugs pose? It would not be that bad, except for the fact that recent studies have concluded that D.A.R.E. does not have the desired effect of curtailing drug use, and in some cases, may actually increase the likelihood of adolescents using drugs. For example, in December of 1997, the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder announced 10 programs, out of hundreds whose aim is to solve pressing social problems, that demonstrably satisfied the center's criteria for success. Unfortunately, D.A.R.E. was not among the group of programs who met the standards for success. Another study conducted by the Research Triangle Institute, for the Institute of Justice, the research wing of the United States Department of Justice, found that D.A.R.E. effectively increased participants knowledge of drug use. Unfortunately, the program did little or nothing to change their attitudes or behavior towards the substances. Furthermore, on July 23, 1997, the Minnesota Attorney General's Office released a 96-page report which critically evaluated D.A.R.E.'s success in Minnesota. The report noted that "The majority of D.A.R.E. evaluation studies report minimal effects on the objective of preventing the onset or continued use of alcohol or other drugs." It went on to confirm that "A large number of D.A.R.E. graduates recall D.A.R.E. positively and remember specific peer resistance skills taught in the program, but also report not using these skills in real-life circumstances." These studies, and others, have concluded that despite D.A.R.E.'s popularity, it simply does not create the desired effects of reduced drug and alcohol use among its graduates. Although some may argue that even if we are only increasing the police presence and possibly increasing the self-esteem of the students who participate in the program, while the program itself does not meet its stated goals, we are doing so at a cost of $600 million dollars and also preventing other programs from being implemented. Furthermore, with lengthy articles appearing in Reason, Kansas City Magazine, and USA Today which criticize D.A.R.E., we should be asking ourselves why the public's stance towards the program has not changed- even in light of the recent reports of D.A.R.E.'s ineffectiveness. A survey was done which surveyed Minnesotans for the aforementioned report by the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, found that 88 percent of those surveyed would support D.A.R.E. even if there was no scientific evidence that it works. Why would anyone want to support a program that didn't work? There is no simple answer to this question. The main reason is that the public, ourselves included, wants to do something about drugs. While the number of people who use drugs increases, we have to do something that at least gives the impression that we are actively combating this problem. As one researcher noted, "D.A.R.E. is the world's biggest pet rock. If it makes us feel good to spend the money on nothing, that's okay, but everyone should know that it does nothing." In essence, if we gave up on D.A.R.E., symbolically, we would be giving into the war on drugs. But, in order to really make in inroads against drug use, we must divert the funds which we currently spend supporting the D.A.R.E. program, and steer the money towards programs that have proven to effectively combat drug use. However, because D.A.R.E. is so deeply entrenched into our schools and because it is almost a billion-dollar industry, it will be difficult to change our current anti-drug policy for elementary school children. Because D.A.R.E. is such a large industry, it has tried hard to maintain its position as the largest and most prolific anti-drug program. Over the years, it has tried to intimidate those who write articles or produce television programs that question D.A.R.E.'s effectiveness. A prime example of D.A.R.E.'s attempts at muzzling its critics, was when it successfully prevented the publication of a study conducted by the prestigious Research Triangle Institute (RTI). In 1991, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) commissioned RTI to study the effectiveness of D.A.R.E. This was to be the definitive study on D.A.R.E. In the beginning, D.A.R.E. instructed state groups to work with RTI, so that it may produce a favorable report, one which give D.A.R.E. ammunition to shoot down its critics. However, as soon as preliminary results showed that D.A.R.E. may not be effective as effective as once thought, D.A.R.E. supporters rallied around their program. After the study was published and found that although the program was extremely popular, but that it had almost no effect on drug use, calls and letters from congressional leaders and government officials began to pour into the National Institute of Justice. The D.A.R.E. supporters stressed that the curriculum had changed since the study had been done . This made the study useless. This constant "upgrading" or changing of the D.A.R.E. program is also another tactic used to try and evade criticism of the program. If the curriculum never stays the same long enough for it to be studied fully, then D.A.R.E. can always claim that their new "improvements" in the curriculum were not taken into account. In October of 1994, for the first time in recent memory, the Justice Department declined to publish a study that it had funded, and that had successfully completed the peer-review process. After the study was dumped by the NIJ, The American Journal of Public Health accepted the study. According to a Justice Department official, this move infuriated D.A.R.E. As a result, according to two editors at The American Journal of Public Health, "D.A.R.E. has tried to interfere with the publication of this. They tried to intimidate us." The study was eventually published by the journal, but the NIJ issued a statement at the same time, which to many researchers surprise, downplayed the evidence which had shown that D.A.R.E. was ineffective. Another example of D.A.R.E.'s strategy of strong-arming its critics, was when it successfully forced NBC's television program Dateline to cancel a segment which questioned its effectiveness. According to sources, Glen Levant, the founder of D.A.R.E. sent a letter to Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric (NBC's parent company), which alleged that Dateline staged a parent meeting in Indiana at which a discussion of D.A.R.E. took place. Levant claimed the show had placed "ringers" in the audience, so as to give the impression that many of the parents were against D.A.R.E. Due to the recent Dateline episode in which a truck was rigged to explode, these accusations were taken very seriously. Although these charges were vehemently denied by both the Parent Association in Indiana and by Dateline, the story was delayed and delayed again after a flood of calls came pouring into NBC's offices when the segment was advertised in T.V. Guide. These tactics used by D.A.R.E. and also the overwhelmingly high approval ratings that the program has garnered, proves that D.A.R.E. and the American public are willing to keep promoting ineffective policies and entrench them into our school until the point of no return. Who are the real losers? Some may believe that it is the tax payers who shell out more than a half a billion dollars annually to support an ineffective program. However, the real losers are our children, who will ultimately suffer as the mere existence of D.A.R.E. crowds out funding for other more effective programs. They will be the ones to suffer, as they inherit a world beset by rising drug use, because we were too insolent to admit our mistakes.