Now instructors speak only for about eight minutes during each lesson, partly so students can spend more time practicing tough decisions in activities with their friends.
Christine Rapp, who has been a full-time D. And the middle-school curriculum, intended for seventh graders, has the students apply the guidance much more to drugs. The four strategies that make up the acronym were teased from interviews that the two researchers conducted with kids across the country.
The largest one , published by Hecht, Miller-Day and their colleagues in , asked 6, students to fill out questionnaires about their use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana at several points over a two-year period. Their antidrug attitudes were also more likely to stick over time.
A subset of that study with 1, students who were already using drugs, showed that the program reduced substance use at a rate that was 72 percent higher than the control group. Steven West , a rehabilitation counselor at Virginia Commonwealth University who once published a meta-analysis showing D. Throughout the '90s, national leaders of the program resisted the scientific findings, and in some cases even tried to bribe academic journals not to publish them.
Program leaders told the press that strong public support for D. They also claim the program improves the relationship between youths and law enforcement. There's one thing the D. There have been successful anti-drug campaigns in the past, and some of that history provides hints about whether the Colorado campaign will succeed — and whether other programs down the line will succeed as well.
Jars of marijuana in a Colorado dispensary. When it comes to anti-drug campaigns, honesty really might be the best policy. There's a fine line to walk between conveying the risks and exaggerating the dangers of drugs. Various studies show DARE, for example, failed to significantly reduce drug use among participants.
For many participants of DARE, the program's failure likely comes as little surprise. Teens were simply too good at catching and dismissing clear exaggerations about the detrimental health effects of relatively harmless drugs like marijuana, and that helped discredit DARE's overall efforts. Even after DARE reworked its curriculum in , one of the program's now-deleted "fact sheets" claimed marijuana has no medical value, weakens the immune system, and causes insanity and lung disease — claims that are widely disputed by health experts.
Teens, for example, might know that the high school quarterback is a weekend pot smoker. If they see that his marijuana use doesn't seem to pose an immediate threat to his physical or mental health, they'll immediately grow skeptical of any message that claims marijuana makes people stupid or crazy.
They've got great BS thermometers. Research shows that some anti-drug messages can even lead to more drug use. A small study from researchers at Ohio University and Pennsylvania State University suggested that anti-drug advertisements may foster curiosity about drug use, although the study couldn't find a clear explanation as to why. Another study published in Human Communication Research found some children are less likely to report anti-drug attitudes after their parents admitted to previous drug use.
Slater says part of the issue with these approaches might be that they "normalize" drug use. By doing that, some anti-drug campaigns inadvertently remove some of the stigma attached to illicit substances. With marijuana in particular, all these issues require even more consideration. Since the drug is relatively safe, compared to other drugs, and the detrimental effects — if they exist — would take years and perhaps decades to fully develop, it's much harder to stay honest while actively discouraging marijuana use.
These scientific findings stand in stark contrast to the belief, held by scores of schoolteachers and parents, that D. One reason for this discrepancy, clinical psychologist Donald R.
Lynam, now at Purdue University, and his colleagues wrote in a article, is that teachers and parents may overestimate the prevalence of substance use among children.
As a consequence, they may assume a decline in use when students of D. But that conclusion is erroneous if children who did not receive drug prevention education display levels of drug use that are just as low, if not lower.
In addition, as Lynam and his colleagues observe, D. The good news is that some proponents of D. Research on these revised programs should soon tell us whether they will make a dent in the considerable problem of substance abuse among vulnerable youth.
This article was originally published with the title "Just Say No? Donald R. Lynam et al. Stephen J. Already a subscriber? Sign in.
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