This Is Your Country on Drugs: How the DARE Generation Got High

By Ryan Grim, Wiley Press. Posted July 6, 2009.

In the early nineties, kids reported that the supply of their favorite drugs was steady. It was demand that was up.

In a span of five years in the early nineties, "personal disapproval" of marijuana fell by a fifth. Disapproval dropped first for eighth-graders, a year before their use increased, and the same pattern held for the older kids. The number of young people who thought that the drug is dangerous also dropped significantly. Both beliefs are leading indicators in the survey: when kids don’t disapprove and aren’t afraid of a given drug, a rise in use is on the way.

* * * *

The high-school class of 1996 was the first one to increase its use of drugs since the across-the-boards decline of the eighties. That group of students had entered kindergarten around 1983, the same year that the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, now D.A.R.E. America, was founded by Los Angeles Police Department chief Daryl Gates.

The idea behind D.A.R.E. is simple. If drug use spreads like a virus, the thinking goes, then inoculating children before they’re exposed could slow the spread. Early on, however, D.A.R.E.’s creators made a decision that has been critical to both its success and its failure: they chose cops as the ones to deliver the vaccine. The current course includes some essay writing and test taking, but it’s mostly about watching and listening as a uniformed officer conducts an intentionally frightening version of show-and-tell.

Using cops as the public face of the organization -- though not surprising, given Gates’s background -- won it a vocal and politically popular champion. Police forces appreciated the rare opportunity to forge relationships with children outside the cops-and-robbers matrix. The police officer as public servant is a role cops understandably enjoy playing. "D.A.R.E. ‘humanizes’ the police: that is, young people can begin to relate to officers as people," offers the organization’s promotional material. "D.A.R.E. permits students to see officers in a helping role, not just an enforcement role."

Officers chosen to be part of the program first go through eighty hours of training in child development, classroom management, and teaching. Those who take on high-school classes get an additional forty hours’ worth. Though versions of the program are available for all grades, D.A.R.E. concentrates on fifth- and sixth-graders. The curriculum is highly standardized, with seventeen sessions focusing on the dangers of drugs and drug addiction, as well as the "Three R’s": "Recognize, Resist and Report." The officer shows the kids what drugs look like and tells stories of lives ruined or ended. He or she teaches students how to avoid peer pressure and how to build their own "self-esteem" -- which, it’s assumed, will give kids the strength to say no.

D.A.R.E. cops often stick around for lunch and recess to talk further with their kids about drugs -- and much else. As a 1988 federal Bureau of Justice Assistance study explains, "Students have an opportunity to become acquainted with the officer as a trusted friend who is interested in their happiness and welfare. Students occasionally tell the officer about problems such as abuse, neglect, alcoholic parents, or relatives who use drugs."

The campaign has succeeded on many fronts, as any parent who’s been scolded for drinking by a young child knows all too well. And it has inspired more than mere scolding. In 1992, a Maryland girl told her D.A.R.E. officer that her parents were growing pot, and they each spent thirty days in jail, according to the Washington Post. Two kids in Boston reported their parents the same year; the year before, a Colorado child called 911 and said, "I’m a D.A.R.E. kid," then told the operator about a baggie of pot that he’d found. A nine-year-old Georgian called the cops after stumbling on some speed in his parents’ bedroom. "At school, they told us that if we ever see drugs, call 911 because people who use drugs need help," said Darrin Davis to a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. "I thought the police would come get the drugs and tell them that drugs are wrong. They never said they would arrest them."

In the forthcoming excerpt: D.A.R.E. backfires, helping to bring about a psychedelic renaissance.

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Ryan Grim is the senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post and can be reached at ryan@huffingtonpost.com. He is author of "This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America (Wiley, 2009).

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