Cops in the Classroom: A Longitudinal Evaluation of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (Dare)

Abstract

Although aggressive enforcement programs have been the backbone of our national drug control policy, school-based drug education has been widely praised as the most promising strategy for achieving long-term reductions in the demand for drugs and alcohol. Employing specially trained police officers in the classroom, Project DARE has become America's most popular and prevalent drug education program. Despite this status, the effectiveness of the program has yet to be demonstrated. A longitudinal randomized experiment was conducted with 1,584 students to estimate the effects of DARE on their attitudes, beliefs, and drug use behaviors in the year following exposure to the program. DARE had no statistically significant main effects on drug use behaviors and had few effects on attitudes or beliefs about drugs. However, significant interactions between DARE and other factors (e.g., metropolitan status) suggest that some program effects varied across subgroups of the target population. This research provides a test of the comprehensive model of school-based prevention and helps to identify possible differential effects of this drug education initiative.