Preventative Measures

These programs help educate children to the dangers of drugs and alcohol. In addition, faculty learn the signs and symptoms of these abuses. Some programs go to the extent of having guest speakers, the same age as the students, giving their testimony to how a substance affected them. Many organizations such as the Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention and the Department of Education, who made the Truency Reducation Demonstration Program. These two organizations specifically target areas with high truancy rates and offer training on reducing these numbers through reward programs and other incentives (Henry, 2010). The National Association of School Nurses have created “Smart Moves, Smart Choices,” as an education program for substance abuse prevention. Along with, the National Education Association who provide materials to schools and curriculum ideas for integrating prevention programs into the classroom (Schachter, 2012). Within this curriculum, there are short videos that grab students attention along with guest speaker who have first hand experiences with substance abuse. As a more preventative measure, schools are inacting Suspicionless Random Drug testing that can be administered to students in particular schools. More schools are even going to this type of preventative measures. The Office of National Drug Control Policy is actively trying to gather funds for schools to

Children, starting as early as elementary school, are being educated on substance abuse. As of 2013, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, D.A.R.E., administers a school-based substance abuse, gang, and violence prevention program in 75 percent of the United States school districts. Since 1983, 70,000 police officers have taught the D.A.R.E. program to approximately 114 million elementary through high school students in the United States alone ("Is the D.A.R.E. Program Good for America's Kids K-12?"). This program is aimed at preventing drug use in elementary, middle, and high school students. A needle-exchange program implicitly encourages the exact opposite message, condoning immoral and illicit behavior. Governments should focus on discouraging drug use, providing more productive treatment for recovery, and punishing drug users instead of supplying the materials to continue their addiction. Young children have the potential to take more risks and must receive a clear message on drugs, which should coincide with the no tolerance policy they are being taught in school with implementation of the D.A.R.E. program. A needle-exchange program is more of a hopeful harm reduction campaign that sends the wrong message to young children and society as a whole. If there is to be a positive change in America regarding intravenous drug use, then the government and school programs all need to be on the same page; we

Many think the program D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) which was created in order to have a long term effect for drug abuse prevention actually works. But does it actually help prevent kids from using drugs? Solid evidence shows that the program doesn’t work.

America is wasting money on campaigns that don’t work. D.A.R.E, a program that goes to schools in America, hasn’t made any more progress than giving five dollars to a psychopath murderer. (Vance 1) D.A.R.E. is a program that schools use to explain what drugs do to you, and how they affect your life. A national survey on Drug Use and Health led made by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services says; “Drug

According to Mathea Falco, “Many schools rely on programs which have not been evaluated, or worse yet, have been found to have no impact. In 1988, a review of 350 different school programs found that only 33 had any valid evaluation data, while just three programs reported reductions in tobacco, alcohol or drug use” (qtd. in Rosenbaum). One of the most prolific abstinence based education programs is DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). The program, founded in 1983, places police officers in classrooms to provide training to help youth recognize the dangers of drug use, resist peer pressure to try drugs, and focuses on the importance of avoiding drug use of any kind. In 2002, a study funded by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that 48% of the teen population has tried illegal drugs (United States). Abstinence based education programs ultimately imply and teach false information: that a single use of any number of drugs can kill a child or leave them addicted. Once these children enter their teen years, the numbers presented by the Partnership imply that it is likely they are going to be exposed to drugs. Once they try drugs or see others try them, if they do not see the outcomes taught to them as immediately evident, they become mistrustful of all the other information that was taught to them. This renders the entire

Typically, LST is implemented during all three years of middle school. Long-term research on LST has shown that the program is effective through high school. For example, in, five and a half years after baseline data collection, students in the LST group were 23% less likely to try marijuana, 21% less probable to try cigarettes, and 11% less likely to have been inebriated compared to the control group that did not participate in LST. Over 90% of students in both the LST group and control group drank alcohol at least once. Although there were significant results for the initiation of substance use, there were no significant effects of the frequency of substance use between groups. However, the study does suggest that the subgroup of participants who engaged in substance use behaviors before the start of the program decreased their use of alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. Public school teachers implemented the LST program, providing evidence for this program’s potential effectiveness in other school settings. However,

Drug Abuse Resistance Education programs are the most widely used drug education programs targeted towards elementary children in the United States. Since the 1980’s over a million children across the United States have been introduced to the D.A.R.E’ program. The program began implementing there curriculum into school system to educate children on drugs and gangs. The common goal for this program is to deter students from the hard life of drugs and gangs and help them steer on the right path.

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program known as D.A.R.E has become a very widespread and popular program throughout the United States. The program appeals to all ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic lines, which is a large part of the reason why the DARE program has grown exponentially. The program’s basic premise was meant to introduce kids to the danger of drugs, before the drugs got to them. The implementation of the DARE program appeared to be what America needed to begin to put a dent in the war on drugs.

Doctor Hanson identifies programs that are recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as effective for specific target groups. Each of these three programs take place before high school, which further proves the earlier statement of early education being the most important characteristic of a drug prevention program. The programs are as follows, “Life Skills Training Program (LST) -LST is a school-based substance abuse prevention program for students 10-14 years of age. It teaches general personal and social skills, specific resistance skills, and normative information. Project ALERT - Project ALERT is also a school-based program, in this case for students in middle school. It teaches drug abstention norms, reasons to abstain, and resistance

D.A.R.E. is “perhaps the most widely acclaimed ‘successful’ intervention of all ineffective delinquency prevention programs” (2003:130). Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) is a City of Los Angeles Government substance abuse prevention education program that seeks to prevent the use of controlled drugs, membership in gangs, and violent behavior. Founded in Los Angeles in 1983 as a joint initiative of the-LAPD chief Daryl Gates and the Los Angeles Unified School District as a demand-side drug control strategy of the American War on Drugs. Students who enter the program sign a pledge not to use drugs or join gangs and are informed by local police officers about the government 's beliefs about the dangers of recreational drug use in an interactive in-school curriculum which lasts ten weeks. (www.dare.com, 2005). According Howell, 2003 D.A.R.E. is deterrence and the notion that giving school aged children educational information on the consequence of alcohol and drug use by police officers will deter them from experimenting and using these substances (Howell, 2003).  This popular program spread wide throughout the United States public schools, but the D.A.R.E. program has been put through many evaluations. Critics of the D.A.R.E. program point to the many studies which find no statistically significant short or long term effects on the key outcome variables of substance use among those who do and do not participate in D.A.R.E. (Drulak, 1997; Rosenbaum and Hanson, 1998;

Since the 1970s, government-funded research studies have shown emerging patterns of substance use, misuse and abuse among school-aged adolescents. Studies such as the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), Monitoring the Future (MTF), Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) are intricate research studies that compiles data on the prevalence and long-term effects of substance abuse in and outside of the school setting. Funded and sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Substance

School –based drug use- prevention programs such as DARE, Project Alert, and Life Skills Training program have been designed to keep kids from illiciting drugs. Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) is an educational program usually delivered by a police officer. The 17 week program components are learning refusal skills, teen leaders, making a public commitment not to use illicit drugs. Also, affective education components include: self-esteem building, alternatives to drug use and decision making. Research on the effectiveness of

“D.A.R.E” is an international nonprofit organization. It is the most prevalent drug abuse prevention program in the United States, which is often referred to as the most prevalent drug prevention program in the world! The original D.A.R.E. program was developed in 1983 as part of a joint effort between the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Unified School District to "break the generational cycle of drug abuse, related criminal activity, and arrest." The original curriculum consisted of core elements such as resistance, skill training, and self-esteem building, supplemented with additional information on gangs and legal issues related to drug use. The program focused mainly on something called "gateway" drugs, which are drugs such as tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and inhalants, which usually lead to harder drug use.

The purpose of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program was to provide an educational teaching tool that would encourage and provide resources to combat drug use, peer pressure and hopefully prevent early entry in the juvenile justice system. Furthermore, these refusal tactics were aiming to help kids say no to drugs. Also, another purpose of this program was to improve kids social skills and enhance their self-esteem in hopes that it would deter unhealthy behavior and actions.

Since 2000, the drug use rate in America has risen to the highest it’s ever been. In a survey done in 2009, 8.7 percent of people age 12 and up said that they used illegal substances within a month of taking the survey, a 9 percent increase since 2008 (Abuse, National Institute on Drug, 2010). This statistic alone is very concerning due to