District 54 rightly cancels DARE program
December 19th, 2008 | by Brian Costin Published in Blog, Education, Public Safety | 2 Comments
From the Schaumburg Review.
The Public Safety Committee in Schaumburg unanimously agreed to cancel the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program in School District 54 for lack of results and to bolster street patrol duty.
Is DARE an effective program at reducing drug use? To my surprise not only has DARE been found to be ineffective in reducing drug use, some studies have shown the program actually increases alcohol, tobacco, and drug useage.
Below are a number of studies and articles I found on the DARE topic:
Ineffective Primary Prevention Programs
Surgeon General of the United States
In 2001, the Surgeon General of the United States placed the D.A.R.E. program in the category of “Does Not Work”.Dare to Keep Your Kids off DARE
Reason Foundation
One study after another has found that students who complete DARE are just as likely to use drugs as students who don’t.DARE’S EFFECTIVENESS QUESTIONED
Department of Criminal Justice and Center for Research in Law
and Justice University of Illinois at Chicago
Research by Dr. Dennis Rosenbaum in 1998, found that D.A.R.E. graduates were more likely than others to drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, and use illegal drugs.
When faced with an ineffective program and limited resources, what should you do? End the program and reorganize your resources to best serve the community. That is exactly what the District 54 board and the Schaumburg Police Department has done here, and I say bravo to that!
Two individuals of note here are Ed Rafferty, the School District 54′s Superintendent, and Richard Casler, Schaumburg Director of police operations who said, ”Numerous studies over several years don’t support the effectiveness of DARE”. Their actions helped prevent the future waste of taxpayer dollars on a innefective government program.
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February 23rd, 2009 at 12:28 AM (#)
[...] Freedom Coalition also applauded the recent move by Schaumburg and Richard Casler to end the innefective DARE program. One move, good or bad, does not make or break a Police Chief, it’s an accumulation of [...]
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:15 AM (#)
[...] The DARE program that has been scientifically proven to be ineffective at reducing drug use, and sometimes part of a School Resource Officer’s duties, should be eliminated and those [...]