Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) is the most popular drug education program in the United States. Since 1980’s over a million children across the United States have been introduced to the DARE program. DARE began implementing their curriculum into school systems with the goal of educating children about the negative aspects of drugs and gangs. The principal goal for this program is to deter students from the hard life of using drugs and being in gangs. Even though the DARE program has positive outcomes other than deterring children from drugs and gangs. The program is considered ineffective because it does not deter children.
What is the Purpose of D.A.R.E?
The DARE program is intended to help deter school aged children from using and
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There are many studies that come to the conclusion that DARE is ineffective. Clayton, Cattarello, and Johnstone (1996) conducted a five year longitudinal study evaluating the long-term effects of DARE on elementary students (p.1). In their study, they randomly selected twenty-three elementary schools to use the DARE program. Additionally, eight schools were chosen to be the control group, and they were given basic drug education classes in correlation to their health class. The participants in this study were 6th grader, and they were pre tested prior to their sixteen week DARE instruction and post tested after the completion of the program. In addition, they received follow up surveys every year up until their sophomore year of high …show more content…
One limitation the DARE program experiences according to Clayton, Cattarello, and Johnstone (1996) is “drug prevention programs are seeking to change behaviors which have a strong developmental element” (p. 11). When a DARE program is introduced to a school it only goes over the surface aspects of drugs and gangs, oppose to the external factors that can influence children.
The DARE program needs to evaluate the external factors when deterring children from drugs and gangs. A child does not simply use drugs out of the blue. In many cases, children are pre exposed to drugs or are coerced into using drugs prior to being introduced to the DARE program. Therefore, the DARE program should teach children about drugs and gangs in addition to addressing their external