Just Say Nonsense

...Children who had puffed on just one or two cigarettes came out of the program with a strong distaste for I'air de Marlboro...

...New-comb's 1988 book, Consequences of Adolescent Drug Abuse, had an innocent enough conclusion: There was, he wrote, no evidence that most people who experiment with drugs get hooked...

...Ignore the problem...

...I don't think we can say there's responsible use of marijuana or cocaine...

...These explanations match the risk factors identified by Dr...

...Realistic or not, responsible use is not a message that the feds want delivered...

...That ought to change...

...If high risk children start on an even footing with the rest of their classmates, they're less likely to drop out or slip into drug use...

...According to Dr...

...Dumbed down textbooks...

...Michael Newcomb...

...Technically, they were right: 2.3 is about 60 percent of 3.7...

...Assuming officers are paid $35,000 per year (including benefits), that's at least $14 million spent for weekly salaries during training...

...And the money, now that it's flowing, is subject to the oldest fact of bureaucratic life: Once a government subsidy starts, it's virtually impossible to shut down...

...In some studies, more than half the children are lost...

...The schools claimed these expenses were justified because they offered kids drug-free activities...

...Kandel says that children's depression and poor relationships with parents are greater threats than peer pressure...

...Supervisors didn't expect the schools to prove the drug programs worked...

...But at the 18 The Washington Monthly/May 1993 end of the second year, almost all positive effects had faded, and kids in the study were now smoking cigarettes and marijuana to about the same degree as those who hadn't been in SMART...

...It differs in recognizing that most kids do experiment with some of these substances—particularly alcohol...

...Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news...

...CADPE held firm, demanding that they prove every dollar was spent as intended...

...Although the message it delivers is substantially the same as the others, this one is unique: DARE is taught only by uniformed police officers...

...And if only three-quarters of these trained cops are working for DARE half-time, the total would be over $125 million just for annual payroll...

...Like the Just Say No approach, it does not condone alcohol, cigarette, or drug use by children...

...Most kids who try something don't get in trouble," says Newcomb, who is now a professor of counseling psychology at the University of Southern California...

...It's a new alphabet soup, all acronyms for messages of abstinence: STAR, DARE, ALERT, and dozens more...

...One factor may have been the weekly 90-minute home visits from counselors who met with the children's parents...

...The "stuff' is an educational product sold by this guy's company...

...responsible use debate was part of a 1991 General Accounting Office (GAO) report that criticized the single-minded position taken by the government: "Current research evidence has not demonstrated the general superiority of one prevention approach over any other, nor have any evaluations isolated the effects of a no use approach...

...What went right...

...There's a tendency by the evaluators to report back what they think the agency wants to hear rather than what's really going on...

...But when they tried to reproduce STAR in Indianapolis, the results weren't nearly as dramatic...

...ALERT researchers, however, claimed a heartening 60 percent drop in marijuana use...

...If these estimates are even close, DARE is easily the nation's most expensive drug prevention program...

...Generally, the agencies that are funding the programs are also the ones paying for the evaluation," says Dr...

...But alcohol is legal in society, and adolescents are probably going to use it at some point...

...So what's the solution...

...In an evaluation of one program, ALERT, 1.4 percent of the kids who had been in the class had tried marijuana within 15 months of completing the course, compared to 3.7 percent of the kids who hadn't participated—a difference of 2.3 percent...

...The Just Say No program created a problem by oversimplifying it and acting as if there were a simple answer to the complex problem of drug abuse...

...In the past 10 years, drug education has become a $2 billion industry, with companies selling expensive teachers' seminars and anti-drug texts to schools across the country...

...they merely wanted to make sure the drug war money went to the right place...

...The no use vs...

...One isolated study found that less than 70 percent of the material was presented as intended...

...And, amazingly, it isn't even a new breakthrough in dealing with troubled teens—it's a preschool project for children 3 to 4 years old that began in 1962...

...Since car crashes with drunk teenagers are a leading cause of death for that age group, I think we're really missing the boat if we don't attack that realistically...

...Drug bust That, of course, sounds encouraging...

...In the 1992 appropriation, its share of the pie came to almost $10 million...

...To evaluate how well the program worked, the children were tested one and two years later...

...Just saying no to ineffective educational gimmicks is one informed decision grown-ups ought to be making...

...A 1988 analysis published in the Journal of Drug Education found that although the sessions probably didn't keep kids away from drugs, they did reassure "parents that the schools are at least trying to control substance abuse among students...

...Since the early eighties, Just Say No courses—classroom sessions, usually about a dozen, Jeff Elliott is a northern California writer who covers science, health, and environmental issues...

...Evaluation is difficult work: Because follow-up takes years, many children are lost to researchers as families move away and kids drop out of school or fail to return questionnaires...

...I think, to be honest, that's the only realistic approach—at least for alcohol," says Newcomb...

...Money well spent if it keeps our children from inhaling, right...

...And while the managers of programs like DARE and STAR are eager to fill their coffers, no one is really sure what happens to all the drug education money once it trickles down to the schools...

...Three years after CADPE kicked off, California red-lined it out of its 1992 budget...

...At the same time, state education departments which are doling out drug education money need to make certain the money's reaching the classroom and not financing, as it did in California, bus rides, ball games, and other boondoggles...

...Is he peddling video games...

...According to Mathea Fal-co's enthusiastic 1992 book, The Making of a Drug-Free America, the nine-year old STAR program is "one of the most effective prevention programs in the country...

...Another factor is the social and educational value of preschool...

...While ALERT delayed many kids from trying marijuana and found modest effects on their use of alcohol, the benefits disappeared the next year...

...Department of Education guidelines demand a firm stance of "no illegal use of legal substances and no use of illegal substances...

...But the same federal dollars that pressure evaluators to put a positive spin on the results also pressure independent scientists—many of them dependent on research grants from federal agencies—to keep their opinions to themselves...

...jj No program, however, illustrates the folly be- § hind Just Say No as DARE, the most widely 3 taught program nationwide...

...The GAO concluded that "the search for effective drug abuse prevention programs will be most effective...

...But this was big news in the last summer of the Reagan administration, when "use" and "abuse" were synonymous...

...But I've seen data that this stuff doesn't make any difference at all...

...A California program, CADPE, tried to find out by making the schools accountable...

...These programs have produced exorbitant claims of success: "More than 25 million kids will be impacted by the highly successful DARE program," reads one glowing press release...

...Denise Kandel of Columbia University, who has studied the topic for 20 years...

...Worse, the evaluators lost track of more than 50 percent of the kids before the follow-ups were completed...

...STAR and its cohorts cost between $15 and $25 per child...

...The evaluators found that it had the strongest effects on kids that needed it least...

...You, in part...

...The approach seemed valid: Once a week for 12 weeks, kids would be taught to resist peer pressure, interpret ads for booze or cigarettes, and practice saying no through role playing...

...DARE's impact on reducing drug use among young people is well-documented by numerous studies...

...But how well does that $12 figure stand up to scrutiny...

...So what can we do about adolescent drug abuse...

...According to a Justice Department report, nearly 10,000 police officers have had the two-week DARE training sessions...

...The first follow-up found children still doing well, at least in resisting cigarettes...

...CADPE had one advantage, however, over most Just Say No programs: At least it was evaluated...

...Meanwhile, a new University of Michigan study finds that, after years of decline, marijuana, cocaine, and LSD use is actually rising among eighth graders...

...The cost of such outreach now is staggering, unless a broad national service program were in place in which volunteers were doing the work on a large scale that the High/Scope did on a small one...

...Just Say Nonsense Nancy Reagan's drug education programs don't reduce use, but they do waste hundreds of millions of dollars by Jeff Elliott At "can't get caught in the middle here—I've got my job," the man whispers into the .telephone, careful not to be overheard...

...Who pays for DARE...

...We have no idea how well or how much of any curriculum is actually delivered...

...Official DARE estimates peg the program's cost at $12 per child, which would make it the cheapest drug education program in the country...

...Despite a proven record in reducing drunk-driving deaths, SADD's recognition that teenagers drink means it doesn't qualify for any drug war money...

...Turns out that the effectiveness of the mantra of Nancy Reagan's first ladyship may be about as durable as a caffeine buzz...

...Founded in 1983, DARE, which grew from an idea proposed by § May 1993/The Washington Monthly 19 then-Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, now reaches five million schoolchildren...

...And if they do have the courage to speak out, they need only remember what happened to their colleague, Dr...

...Some researchers readily admit they would like to junk the strict Just Say No dogma and incorporate the responsible use approach...

...Even better, the benefits continued well into adulthood...

...A better indicator of ALERT's success comes from a study by the Rand Corporation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation...

...It seems doubtful that preschool training would have much influence on behavior a quarter century later...

...Schools—the paying customers—ought to hold the Just Say No companies to the fire, demanding genuine evaluations before investing money in curricula that are just going to absorb valuable class time and whose results go up in smoke...

...if their policies are broadened to permit review of any type of promising program...

...The rest of the money comes from city funds, corporate and private grants, and drug seizures, bringing in rivers of money to police departments to win public relations points in their jurisdictions and time off from more difficult crime fighting...

...They were wrong...

...At least $1.25 billion of that comes from federal block grants that schools can use for counseling, social work, and other "anti-drug" activities and paraphernalia—including posters, bumperstickers, t-shirts, and coffee mugs...

...Children who do well in school are less likely to be depressed, and better trained parents translate into a more stable home life for the children...

...Another program benefitting from massaged data is Project STAR...

...It puts enormous pressure on the evaluator to massage the data to produce positive results...

...One alternative is called responsible use...

...That's the catch: There's little evidence that these dollars do anything to keep kids from using drugs...

...At least an additional $750 million comes from local and state governments and corporate gifts...

...And doesn't a 60 percent improvement sound so much better than 2 percent...

...It makes the program providers unhappy, and it makes the funding agencies unhappy...

...Of course, some reviewers of Just Say No have tried in recent years to show that the emperor has no clothes...

...Joel Moskowitz, principal investigator for the Western Consortium for Public Health, a nonprofit attached to the University of California at Berkeley and at Los Angeles...

...But through the magic of statistics, these small gains have been translated into tremendous victories in the war on drugs...

...It'll be worth it, CADPE told the schools, because we're in this for the long haul...

...As a result, one reviewer of SMART says, "Even the modest effects reported by the investigators are debatable...

...I think the targets ought to be delaying use] and focusing on abuse rather than just focus on use...

...Jail every kid that sips from a can of beer...

...A 1988 review found that only 10 percent of 350 different school programs had been assessed at all...

...the only problem is that it's not true...

...According to its most recent follow up evaluation, more than 70 percent of the inner city kids in the program stayed away from drug dealing compared to peers who hadn't participated...

...Except for DARE, which is run by police officers, all school programs are presented by school faculty or health educators...

...This eliminates many worthy organizations, such as SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving...

...Administrators were astonished when schools asked if they could use the money for football teams and bus trips...

...Nope: a Just Say No anti-drug curriculum taught in schools...

...Cooking the numbers like this is not unusual...

...The story made the front page of The New York Times, and provoked a fierce, kneejerk reaction from parents' groups and White House officials which led Newcomb to believe that his federal funding was in jeopardy...

...These meetings focused on the child's development—in essence, teaching parents how to parent...

...There's nothing nationwide that meets these standards—except DARE...

...Consider Project SMART: Founded in 1981, SMART was one of the earliest Just Say No programs taught in junior high schools...

...held over a few months in sixth, seventh, or eighth grade, sometimes supplemented by community and high school events—have quietly become commonplace...

...The nation's schools have bought a bill of goods so large and so ostensibly worthy that it's difficult to acknowledge disappointing results...

...The Drug Free Schools and Communities Act of 1986 requires that 10 percent or more of the state grants to governors go only to projects that include "classroom instruction by uniformed law enforcement officials" and meet other criteria met only by programs "such as Project Drug Abuse Resistance Education...

...And more important, as even Fal-co notes, "DARE does not reduce tobacco, alcohol, or drug use," a conclusion other studies have reached...

...STAR'S results in Kansas City, for instance, did seem remarkable: an across-the-board, 30 percent drop in alcohol, marijuana, and cigarette use by kids...

...Perhaps the best that can be said of the Just Say No ideology is that it makes parents and teachers feel better...

...Phyllis Ellickson, the project's primary investigator, this shows that, "If you make even a little dent, it's hard to maintain it...

...In the most recent follow-up, Indiana children were only 3 percent ahead of average for cigarettes, and less than 1 percent for cocaine use...

...We've got to deal with the bigger picture, with people's attitudes in general and not just drugs...

...Up in smoke In the muddle of Just Say No, one program seems to have succeeded: the High/Scope Curriculum, funded by the foundation of the same name...

...Over 90 percent of adolescents drink before leaving high school...