Initially, we found DARE had influenced kids' attitudes toward drugs. So if you asked them questions about what they thought about drugs and what they expected from drugs a couple of months after they received DARE, the kids were more negative about drugs. But [the effect] was really short-lived, and disappeared after about a year.

It seems your study came to the same conclusion as many other studies -- that DARE simply wasn't working.

I think pretty much any well-controlled study that involved randomization of DARE [programs in schools] found the same thing. And none of them came out with evidence in support of DARE's efficacy.

So why has this program continued for so long?

I think the police like it a lot, not just for its potential influence on preventing drug abuse but also because they get a chance to go out and talk to kids (while they're not busting them) and build a good relationship with the community they police.

The other reason is that people are not good scientists about this stuff. The parents look around and don't think their kids are using drugs -- and the kids probably aren't using drugs -- but they say, "Oh, my kid went through DARE. See, DARE works."

Did you find other examples of this blind-faith approach?

You get it a lot from the editorial writers in our local paper or even from some of the police who go through these programs. They say, "You know the studies may not show it, but I can see it in the kids' faces that I'm making a difference and this is important."

And the bottom line is that you can't see it in their faces because you're only seeing kids who went through DARE, and you may think that they don't use drugs, but you don't know that because they won't use them in front of you. And you don't know what these kids would be doing if they didn't do DARE. The only way to find out is through the controlled-study approach.

Has drug war politics kept this program going?

Yes. I do think it would be a politically unpopular thing for a politician to say, "I think we're going to defund DARE." I imagine that it would not sit well with the majority of the voters. You also sound like you are in favor of drug use if you do that.

Do you feel vindicated with Thursday's announcement?

I think it's a good step, but I'm waiting to see what the details look like. DARE has supposedly gone through changes before. The big difference between what's happening now and what has happened in the past is there's an evaluation component tagged onto this curriculum change -- to see whether or not it is effective. Because one of the things that DARE people say in response to my study is, "Well, that was the old version of DARE. We're using a new and improved version of DARE."

In other words, curriculum changes are a nice way of getting around the fact that your old program didn't work. You just promise that the new one will.

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