Testing, DARE and the Ads
Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Chair
November, 2003
To justify expanding the drug testing program in Rockwall ISD, Jim Randolph, principal of Rockwall High, said "It is costly, but what is it worth if we get one kid to say, 'I'm not doing this because I might get tested'?" What price many students should pay to save one from making a poor decision is a serious question, but it is not the most important issue here. According to the largest study ever done on drug testing in schools, this mythical Rockwall student will not say no. In April, 2003 the results of a federally financed study of 76,000 students nationwide were published in The Journal of School Health. It found that drug use is just as common in schools with testing as in those without it. In schools that tested for drugs 37 percent of 12th graders said they had smoked marijuana in the last year compared with 36 percent in schools that did not. Such a slight deviation is statistically insignificant. It means the results are essentially identical, the researchers said. The same pattern held for every other drug and grade level.
By far the most widely used anti-drug program used in schools is Drug Abuse Resistance Education, DARE. It was started in April, 1983 by then-Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates and the L.A. Unified School District. Over 600 Texas schools districts still used DARE during the 2002/03 school year. According to a report issued in January, 2003 by the General Accounting Office (GAO) exact costs of the program are unavailable. Outside experts place the figure at anywhere from $650 million to $750 million per year, all diverted from education. In addition, police departments spend at least $215 million to pay for their officers’ participation in the program. The same GAO report concluded, “the six long-term evaluations of the DARE elementary school curriculum that we reviewed found no significant differences in illicit drug use between students who received DARE in the fifth or sixth grade (the intervention group) and students who did not (the control group).”
From 1996 to 2002 the Office of National Drug Control Policy, ONDCP (the drug czar’s office), paid media outlets to insert anti-drug messages in TV programs and in newspaper and magazine articles. When the courts ruled that ONDCP had to disclose its sponsorship, the czar’s office switched to the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, a series of anti-drug ads produced mostly by the Partnership for a Drug Free America. Over the past 6 years, Congress has provided $1.08 billion to the media campaign, making ONDCP one of the country’s largest advertisers and the ads the single largest public service initiative in the history of advertising. A federally funded review of the campaign by Westat Inc. and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania determined that the ads failed to discourage viewers from trying drugs and actually fostered "pro-drug" beliefs among girls and younger teens. Testifying before Congress, co-author Robert Hornick of the Annenberg School of Communication called the negative results among the worst in the history of large-scale public communication campaigns. The Office of Management and Budget found "no evidence" that the ads "have a direct effect on youth drug-related behavior.”
The Dutch are fond of saying that they reduced drug use by making it boring. With the highest rate of illicit drug use in the world, the United States has clearly demonstrated that dramatizing drug use does not reduce it. The only thing that institutions can do that has been shown to decrease drug use among kids is provide after school programs that they enjoy. Unfortunately these programs are inexpensive so no one is lobbying school boards to buy them or Congress to fund them.