English 102-2008
25 March 2015
The Effectiveness of D.A.R.E
Spreading drug awareness to adolescents is an important factor in their early education.
Learning the negative outcomes of drug usage at a young age may prepare the child’s mind to
avoid drugs in the future. It is understandable that many programs strive to educate individuals
on the absence of drugs, but the program must be effective in order to properly teach children.
Ineffective programs should put an end to trying to help younger students avoid drugs. D.A.R.E
well-known drug resistant program. It is a program that “gives kids the skills they need to avoid
involvement in drugs, gangs, and violence” according to the official D.A.R.E website (“About
D.A.R.E.”). The D.A.R.E program has a mission, according to Joseph Santoro, and it is to “teach
children about the dangers of drugs and provide them with the skills to not just say no—but how
to say no” (Santoro). However, D.A.R.E is not as effective as some may think. Although the
D.A.R.E program aims to educate students on the bad influences of drugs, the program should be
discontinued since many D.A.R.E graduates end up doing drugs anyway, it is a waste of
government money and it may destroy families.
First of all, I argue that the majority of students who graduate from the D.A.R.E program
participate in illicit drug use later in life. Even though the opposing side may think that the
D.A.R.E program has a long term effect, most statistics show that individuals forget about the
D.A.R.E program or simply disregard it (Sager). The online article, “The DARE Program Has
Not Been Effective” specifies that round 55 percent of students have tried an illicit drug by the
time they are 18 years old (Sager). From personal observations, the techniques that are taught by
the program will most likely ignored as the child gets older since there is a lot of peer pressure in
high school and college. Many teenagers feel as if they belong when they do drugs such as my
friend. Since he got peer pressured into doing drugs, he is now addicted, and he is also a former
D.A.R.E graduate along with his siblings. The D.A.R.E program have “positive effects (mostly
attitude changes) over the short term” but “DARE has never been proven to have any lasting
effect on the likeliness of children to use drugs later in life” (Sager).
Furthermore, government money needs to be spent on programs that would be effective
to students and not to programs that have been proven to be ineffective. The estimated cost of the
D.A.R.E program is “already $1 [billion] to 1.3 billion,” David Hanson Argues, “that’s a lot for a
completely ineffective, often counterproductive program” (“DARE doesn’t Work”). Government
funds, in my justification, are not being well spent especially when it is going towards programs
such as D.A.R.E. The money that the government spends on the ineffective program could be
used on alternatives that are actually effective such as social norms (“Alcohol Abuse
