DARE, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, is a preventative program. Its aim is to equip our youth with the skills to resist the peer pressure to experiment with and use harmful drugs. One of the unique features of DARE is the use of police officers as instructors.
The DARE lessons focus on four major areas:
Research has shown that DARE has improved students' attitudes about themselves, increased their sense of responsibility to themselves and to police and strengthened their resistance to drugs. For example, before the DARE program in Los Angeles, 51 percent of the 5th grade students equated drug use with having more friends. After training, only eight percent reported this attitude.
DARE has also changed parent attitudes through various evening programs which are designed to teach parents about drugs, symptoms of drug use and ways to increase family communication.
Before DARE, 32 percent of parents thought that it was all right for children to drink alcohol at a party as long as adults were present. After DARE no parents reported such a view. Before DARE, 61 percent thought that there was nothing parents could do about their children's use of drugs; only five percent held this belief after the program.
For more information on DARE, visit the DARE website.
