D.A.R.E. Bedeviled

By SYLVESTER MONROE/ATLANTA

The initials are plastered on bumper stickers and school bulletin boards from California to the Carolinas: DARE. The acronym stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, a $750 million-a-year drug-prevention program that is the most popular in the nation. But is it the most successful?

In the past three years, a number of parents' groups have organized against the program, protesting what they call the pseudo psychology at its core. Says Gary Peterson of Colorado, the founder of the fledgling national group Parents Against DARE: "Our schools are giving away more and more time to social- engineering programs that have not been sufficiently researched." Says Richard Evans of Northampton, Massachusetts: "DARE is awash in the touchy- feely stuff of the '70s. It's tricky and the kind of thing parents need to take a closer look at." Last week the critics of DARE received new ammunition by way of the biggest backer of DARE -- the Department of Justice.

A three-year, $300,000 study has concluded that the effect of DARE's core curriculum -- conducted by specially trained local police officers in 17 weekly, 45-to-60-min. sessions for fifth- and sixth-grade students -- is statistically insignificant in preventing drug use among that group. Resources might be better spent on longer-term, more interactive programs. The study was conducted by the Research Triangle Institute in Durham, North Carolina, and commissioned by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice.

The Justice Department has refused to accept the report's key findings. Defenders of DARE question R.T.I.'s analysis of data, saying fifth- and sixth- graders rarely use drugs and were therefore the wrong sample to study. "It was too strong a statement," says William DeJong, a lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health, who evaluated DARE in 1985. "It was a provocative conclusion not warranted by the study." R.T.I., however, stands by its conclusions, adding that it looked at fifth- and sixth-graders exactly because that has been DARE's target group. Said R.T.I. researcher Susan Ennett: "Unless there's some sort of booster session that reinforces the original curriculum, the effects of most drug-use-prevention programs decay rather than increase with time." Ray, 18, who came through the DARE program in Los Angeles, is a good case in point. He smokes pot. "Mostly everyone I know who was in DARE back with me are doing the same thing I'm doing and more," he says. "Everybody I know gets high. I don't think it worked. Not for me."

But if not DARE, what? Before DARE, says David Seibles, a 10-year veteran with the Gwinnett County police department in Georgia, "it used to be that you'd come in once a year and say, 'Don't do drugs,' and by the time you'd get to the front door, the kids had forgotten everything you said." Says Debbie Allred, principal of Cedar Hill Elementary School in Gwinnett County: "If we didn't have DARE, we'd miss it tremendously. It would be a great loss."

With reporting by Lisa H. Towle/Durham