Truth or DARECover story, Valley Advocate. Newspapers, November 2. Truthor. D. A. R. E. America’s. leading anti- drug program excels at self- promotion. An animated DARE education video begins with a. The sun then rises over. America, over a shiny- clean neighbor- hood of. The. children of someone’s politically- correct imagination emerge from their homes. But along the way the. A Critical Look at the D.A.R.E. Program and Effective Youth Programs by Paige Freiheit, Shannon Montague, and Lindsey Wiggington Poverty & Prejudice: Gang Intervention and Rehabilitation. DARE supporters would regularly accuse critics of being in bed with drug cartels. GAO selected six long-term evaluations for review -- studies that looked at kids 5 to 10 years after the DARE program and evaluated its effect. Police Officer DARE snatches the children’s. So begins their journey. Land of Decisions and Choices, a mysterious landscape of eerie winds, mushrooms and gnarled old. Disney funhouse. But this wilderness is scary: “This. Let’s just find that dog and get outta here,” says. The children are friends. DARE education. They influence each other to. Excuse me, have you seen a. Small dog? I remember seeing. But it. wasn’t his real dogness; there is a difference. What you follow might not be. You follow?”The monsters of addiction. In a flash the monsters of addiction vanish. The. children cheerfully celebrate an idyllic victory at the head of an idyllic. Friday, Feb 16, 2001 8:00 PM UTC Just say no to DARE America's school-based drug prevention program gives in to critics' pressure. DARE beside them. So goes the fiction. For all the time and money put into this one. It’s important first to. DARE – the Drugs and Alcohol Resistance. Education Program - - has become. Used in 5. 2 percent of U. S. DARE’s greatest visibility - - its. As a result, in addition to the. Officers. receive special training and attend DARE workshops and conferences. To pay for it all, police. DARE grants, requiring an ever- growing bureaucracy to administrate the. Developed in 1. 98. Los Angeles Police Department and the LA School Department. DARE quickly became a key weapon in the drug war arsenal, enjoying a strong. First Lady Nancy Reagan and her “just say no” campaign. But now, after 1. DARE is increasingly coming under fire. Support for. the program seems to be weakening even among some police officers. As the whole. of state and federal efforts to address the drug problem have failed to make a. DARE appears to be merely one. There are no critic reviews yet for Dare To Dance. Keep checking Rotten Tomatoes for updates!Program Completely Revised, Reintroduced; Critics Still Skeptical Faced with mounting criticism and a growing body of evidence, DARE America, the sponsor of the eponymous D.A.R.E. Drug Abuse Resistance Education. The DARE program involves children interacting with police officers or sheriffs in a classroom environment rather than in a criminal justice setting. Motivation of the critics. Orange’s DARE program paid $350 for two New England Patriots as guest speakers. For the most part, critics of. DARE have been written off as ideologues, as marijuana- users pushing a pro- drug. The public, meanwhile, appears willing to accept the. DARE hype at face value, showing little interest in debating alternatives. Missing from the public. But let’s not get bogged down. There are many other problems. One thing is immediately clear about DARE: it is very. It has become an industry unto. As with most bureaucratic undertakings. In some cases, money is simply being misused. In Massachusetts. DARE money has been allocated and whether various recipients - -. State Police for example - - should be receiving DARE money at all. All these questions and the. DARE is successful in its overriding mission: to keep kids off drugs. But the. evidence is to the contrary. In the last few years. DARE doesn’t appear to be doing what it sets out to. Efforts to bring this issue to the fore, however, have been largely. That is what may be most. DARE has yet to be debated openly with the taxpayers. United States - -. Massachusetts alone. Instead, DARE administrators and law. For the most part, DARE boosters have found the national media. In Massachusetts, DARE today is funded mostly from the. Since the sin tax was instituted a. The bulk of. the $1. DARE gets about $5 million a. Ultimately, the state Executive Office of Public Safety. DARE program and its funding. While Public Safety. Secretary Kathleen O’Toole (formerly Lt. O’Toole of the Massachusetts. State Police) is nominally in charge of the program, day- to- day oversight has. Public Affairs Director Charles Mc. Donald and. Programs Director Kevin Harrington. Mc. Donald handles the media; Harrington. Last month the public safety. In a press release issued by her office, O’Toole sounded bullish on. DARE, while introducing her newly created in- house watchdog board: “As we. DARE Advisory Board which help review, grade. Picked up and run with little. O’Toole’s comments were in some ways an. Boston Globe investigation the year before. The Globe. discovered that communities throughout the state were misusing DARE money. In Haverhill, the Glove. DARE funds to buy an air conditioner for the. In Newbury, police bought a $2. Newton police bought $7,6. In Monson, police spent $1. DARE. officers. The Globe quoted one police chief who said many departments view the. DARE money as “free cash,” with which departments can plug other holes in. The Globe surfaced other. Many small communities with fairly well- contained drug. Others, such as. Greenfield and Williamsburg, did not apply. O’Toole had responded to the. Globe’s report at the time it was printed: “No question, we need to tighten. What good is it to have procedures if nobody is going to comply. If we’re letting that happen, shame on us.” She pledged to tighten. So O’Toole’s office created. The public safety. The grant applications also may have been more. But little else appears to have changed in the last year. For example, O’Toole seemed. DARE money. If some department buys computers, then it better be computers. Globe. But a recent analysis of. DARE money to buy computers and electronic components. It turns out the. Orlando, Fla. And stays at a Hyatt Regency. Ware spent $1,4. 58 on an office chair and file cabinets. Orange’s DARE program paid. New England Patriots as guest speakers, $2. Critics argue that football players make poor role models.). Orange spent $2,1. Orange Police Cadet Program. While O’Toole may have. DARE spending, three major. Last year, the Mass Criminal Justice. Training Council was awarded $2. Department of Public Health. State Police$3. 91,1. The Department of Public. Health funds are, in effect, rerouted money, to the degree that DPH disburses. The Training Council funding. But the State Police funding is most curious of. Northampton Police Chief. Russell Sienkiewicz, for example, still hasn’t been given what he would. Since when do the State. Police do DARE Programs?” Sienkiewiez asked rhetorically. I put in a few phone calls. And I don’t see a huge influx of troopers coming in to teach about. DARE.” State Police sources defend the expenditure.“Over the past three years. Sgt. Brian O’Hara, State Police DARE. Lowell. We have a major. Band- Aids.”And mighty expensive. Band- Aids at that, in large part because police work at a fairly healthy hourly. Statewide last year, DARE. State. Police were the big spenders at $4. Municipalities with big DARE over- . Auburn at $1. 7,5. Foxboro at $3. 1,3. Hampden at $1. 4,4. Lincoln at $1. 5,0. Longmeadow at $1. Pembroke at $1. 2,8. Pittsfield at. $1. Shrewsbury at $1. South Hadley at $9,5. Webster at $1. 2,5. West Springfield at $1. Of the 1. 7 local departments. Pelham’s report of DARE expenditures stood head and shoulders above. While Pittsfield sent a one- page “report” listing only major category. Pelham carefully documented how it used a grant. We don’t do cream puffs,”. Pelham. Selectman Jeanne Shumway. He takes. things very literally. He asked for what he needed. What shocks me is how some. Perhaps it goes without. DARE loot.“Because DARE is a certified. Pelham Chief Ed Fleury. In addition to being one of DARE’s biggest boosters, DARE. America works to give the program a certain uniformity, particularly when it. Not surprisingly then, in an analysis of 1. DARE America came out a big winner. A significant amount of DARE. Seven departments alone spent. T- shirts. DARE administrators. DARE song: “The world’s a different. But it is also important to. In a recent interview, Pelham Police. Chief Fleury posed it. Does DARE prevent drug abuse?” Fleury acknowledged that he. I’m more conservative ,” he said. It is clear that Fleury is. DARE program is working. You’ve got to be a fiction writer. I just want to do the job.”But it is not clear that the. In October 1. 99. National Institute of Justice- the research are of the. U. S. Department of Justice - found that while DARE may well improve kids’. The report, done by the. Research Triangle Institute, author of hundreds of highly regarded government. Researchers noted that their. DARE has no effect on drug use. But the study was buried. The. government did release the most reaffirming findings from the report: DARE was. But in the end, NIJ refused to publish the report, claiming that. On the local level, DARE. At the Executive Office of Public Safety, Charles Mc. Donald. instead offers a survey by Northeastern University. Its findings are fairly. DARE is very popular; parents believe it is effective in reducing drug. That public policy therefore. As it exists today - . DARE is little equipped to directly benefit. Ironically, the most powerful. DARE funs have been to gets kids, particularly. To kids, it. sends a message that the wilderness is dangerous and, by extension, that the. This is an illusion fostered. In this vision, the Land of Decisions. DARE To Say No. How are municipalities. DARE grants? Given public information laws, I didn’t. I was wrong. Whether intentionally. DARE. On Jan. 4, 1. I wrote to. some 2. Massachusetts police departments seeking records of. Under state law, I. By Jan. 2. 4, after I further. In a Feb. 6, 1. 99. Mary Schwind, Acting Supervisor for Public Records at the Mass Office of the. Secretary of the Commonwealth, I noted: More than half of the police departments. By Feb. 3. 0, staff lawyers. Secretary’s Office to contact various police departments had. Unwilling to. comply in a timely and reasonable manner up front, several police chiefs were. The Buckland Police. Department, for example, responded with “a bill in advance . This bill reflects the lowest paid officer. On Feb. 6, I sent a letter to. Executive Office of Public Safety,, the oversight agency for DARE, seeking. The response, slow in coming, was general and. State DARE administrators were not available to answer my. All inquiries were funneled through Charles Mc. Donald, a public elations specialist. Detailed information about he state Police and Criminal justice Training. Council expenditures, first requested in writing ON Feb. Sept. 2. 5, still has not been provided. In the end I was able to get. But in the course of my investigation more than 1. Faxes promised were never sent.
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