The DARE Program

The D.A.R.E Program

The D.A.R.E Program

The DARE program is an international program mainly based in the United States whose main reason for formation was to curb substance abuse, to prevent joining of gangs and violent behavior by the youth. The project is known as the Drug Abuse Resistance Education and was started in the 1980’s and was meant for children from kindergarten through to the 12th grade. The program is a collaboration between the school teachers and the law enforcement officers in the particular area. The curriculum of the program is meant to equip the elementary, middle and high school students with efficient skills to be able to resist drug abuse when faced with such a decision to make. It’s also meant to boost their self-esteem.

In my view, the DARE program should not be discontinued. This is because the program has had a great positive impact within the society and has mainly assisted the decision making of the youths .The reasons for this include the fact that it has enabled children and adolescents to acquire knowledge and skills to recognize and resist peer pressure to experiment with tobacco, alcohol and other drugs in general and because of that, has led to the reduction of drug abuse in the different countries in which its been implemented in.. A stop of the program will make them susceptible to this since their decision making would be impacted negatively. Another reason not to discontinue the program is because it aids in the development and acquisition of self-esteem, learning about assertiveness in one’s decisions. It also helps one to learn anger management and conflict resolution skill and with that aids in reducing the incidences of violence and tendencies to join youth gangs.

There are several unintended consequences that were brought about by the DARE program and had not been intended prior to the launching of the program. There are both positive and negative consequences. For instance, when the program was being started, it wasn’t intended that there would be a positive image and relationship between the local communities and the law enforcement officers within the region. As earlier stated, the program is run mainly by the law enforcement officers together with the school teachers. They provide lessons to the students and provide them with the relevant simulations to assist them in decision making. They also work together with the children and adolescents to create questionnaires and visit their homes to obtain responses to these questions. By so doing, they foster positive relationships with the parents and thus the entire community at large.

In the recent past, there have been several outcries from researchers who state that their studies have shown that the program is no longer effective and therefore should be stopped. This comes up as an unintended outcome that has been published in several literature. Researchers argue that the DARE graduates are indistinguishable from the students that are not enrolled in the program and that their decisions are more or less similar when it comes to drug abuse. There have been several studies that came up with this result, the most widespread being one conducted in 2011 that concluded that DARE has significantly less effects on an individual’s likelihood to use drugs in the future. This should greatly be assessed and studied in close regard to ensure that if there are any loopholes, these get covered and the program reverts back to the initial plan.

Another unintended outcome is that the program has been stated to cause the children and adolescents to ignore legitimate information about the real adverse effects brought about by abuse of drugs. This is brought about by the fact that ultimately these children see their parents and older sibling using drugs and thus disregard all the teachings they obtained from the program more so when these older individuals also went through the same program. Therefore, during the assessment of the relevance of the program, it’s very important to consider such unintended outcomes since they arise due to a missed step in the training of the program and should be corrected to ensure the main objectives of the program are achieved and that it remains relevant to the society.