D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) administers a school-based substance abuse, gang, and violence prevention program in 75% of US school districts and in 48 countries (as of 2013). Since 1983, 70,000 police officers have taught the D.A.R.E. program to over 200 million K-12 students worldwide – approximately 114 million in the United States alone.






Is the D.A.R.E. Program actually helping America's Kids? Do you think a better substitute is needed/D.A.R.E is not needed at all?

Lol we only had dare for like 1 year in 5th grade
never heard of it again.

I don't think it has any effect tbh

Kirito if I may ask, how old are you? DARE was discontinued a few years ago in my state for reasons that I cannot remember. It was likely a combination of no funding and opponents arguing that it was a waste of tax dollars for an ineffectual program.

It certainly helped me quite a bit. I remember having an officer come in once a year from 4th-6th grade and talk about all the bad things that different drugs can do to your body. The main focus that I remember was tobacco and cigarettes. One officer had a jar filled with probably ten different people's tobacco tar. I don't remember being talked to about any other drugs, just tobacco and alcohol, but I'm sure that was covered as well. I think it all depends on what the child comes home to at the end of the day. However it still is a good idea to at least inform children of what can happen if substances are abused.

Same, as this, only heard them once, and growing up I still saw everyone around me do drugs.

I guess it's not practical.

We did dare in 5th grade it didn't really help but i remember them making us agree to never smoke our use drugs as long as we live i didn't mean anything i don't think but they still made us do it which was weird
Honestly it didn't really help because as kids they can't really do anything that will actually make you want to not do them you can show smoking statistics and death rates all you want generally no one cares and i believe there was a study that even showed when a person (who is already a smoker) saw anti smoking ads ir commercials it made them want to smoke more which isn't surprising
Also in high school you are required to take (hope) or health class for half a semester in that class they try to do basically the same thing but with more factual evidence which also doesn't do much good kids in class tend to go the way of "smoking cigs is dumb but aye man weed cures cancer!!!!! It's the best" and reject all evidence put in front of them about how bad weed supposedly is for you at least think it would make people think about smoking in bathroom or coming to school high asf. Also maybe it's just me but weed seems to be the main drug that's used in high school could just be my location but weed is often the drug most commonly used that and prescription pills but again may just be me but i never see any get busted for cigarettes or alcohol
the safe sex course was useful but the drug part of it needs to be re thought