D.A.R.E. to think of a better solution

Chartiers Valley School District officials are concerned they may be unable to continue… Chartiers Valley School District officials are concerned they may be unable to continue offering the D.A.R.E. program – formerly Drug Abuse Resistance Education, but recently changed to Define, Assess, Respond, Evaluate – because Colliers township commissioners have canceled their police department’s involvement in the district’s program, and Chartiers Valley primarily drew its D.A.R.E. officers from Colliers.

The commissioners say they don’t want to cut the program and that Chartiers Valley should just look to other local departments to find officers certified as D.A.R.E. instructors.

That’s easier said than done, of course.

Other nearby departments have few certified officers, and those officers have their hands full. What’s at the heart of this issue, like so many others, lately, is money.

About two-thirds of the cost of D.A.R.E. is paid for by the school district, and the township picks up the rest. D.A.R.E. isn’t cheap, and officers have said they routinely do more work for it than they bill for. It’s a huge financial burden.

The unfortunate reality is that D.A.R.E. doesn’t work.

It has not been proven to reduce drug experimentation among graduates. D.A.R.E. exposes kids to the knowledge of drugs they may never have heard of, and scares them needlessly.

For the federal government to institute an anti-drug program in schools is noble. For money to be poured into an ineffective waste of valuable class time, however, is not.

The current monetary crunch ought to be an impetus to find a more effective method for preventing drug abuse among teens. Hardship is the mother of innovation – why not use this lack of resources to discover new possibilities?

Rather than draining overtaxed police forces with a six-week program, why not have an officer visit a class once or twice to provide a concrete heads-up to kids – present them with possible consequences for taking drugs and maybe tell a horror story or two. Find recovering addicts willing to speak to kids about what they went through and the hardships the kids can be spared by avoiding drugs. Have a unit in health class discussing the dangers of drugs.

Find a cost-effective program that actually works. Force the stoner kids to go to the Salvation Army to find D.A.R.E. shirts to wear while they sit around smoking pot and thinking of clever, alternative acronyms like Drugs Are Really Exciting.