The History of DARE

In the fall of 1983, the LAPD, under Chief of Police Darryl Gates and in collaboration with the LA Unified School District, launched Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), sending 10 police officers into 50 elementary schools to teach kids how to say no to drugs. By the time DARE celebrated its 10-year anniversary, there were DARE officers in all 50 states, teaching 4.5 million students. The program was praised by presidents and supported by major corporate sponsors, but in the 1990s social scientists started to question its effectiveness, eventually leading to a precipitous decline in the numbers of school districts participating in the program.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Max Felker-Kantor, Associate Professor of History at Ball State University and author of Dare to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Back to the 80s”

by Roman Oriekhov from Pixabay; it is available via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Children from Sterling Heights Elementary school recite the pledge of allegiance at the Drugs Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) graduation on Kadena Air Base (AB), Okinawa, Japan,” taken on February 28, 2003; the image is released to the public and is available via the National Archives (NAID: 6642856).

Additional Sources:

• “D.A.R.E.’s Story as a Leader in Drug Prevention Education,” D.A.R.E. America.
• “DARE Marks a Decade of Growth and Controversy : Youth: Despite critics, anti-drug program expands nationally. But some see declining support in LAPD,” by Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times, September 9, 1993.
• “How effective is drug abuse resistance education? A meta-analysis of Project DARE outcome evaluations,” by ST Ennett, NS Tobler, CL Ringwalt, and RL Flewelling, American Journal of Public Health 1994;84(9):1394-1401.
• “Just Say No to D.A.R.E.,” by Dennis P. Rosenbaum, Criminology and Public Policy, 6(4), 815-824.
• “DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked,” by Rosie Cima, Priceonomics.
• “Just Say No?” by Scott Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz, Scientific American Mind, 15552284, Jan/Feb2014, Vol. 25, Issue 1.
• “A brief history of DARE, the anti-drug program Jeff Sessions wants to revive,” by Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post, July 12, 2017.
• “Proclamation 5854 -- National D.A.R.E. Day, 1988,” by Ronald Reagan, September 8, 1988, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
• “Proclamation 8648—National D.A.R.E. Day, 2011,” by Barack Obama, April 11, 2011, The American Presidency Project.

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