Congratulations on taking a stand against D.A.R.E., the police PR tool that masquerades as a drug education program in classrooms nationwide (Editorial, Aug. 11).
I recently moved to California from Rochester, N.Y., where I grew up and where I was compelled to take part in the D.A.R.E. program in elementary school. I can assure you that D.A.R.E. is everything its critics make it out to be–a simplistic propaganda program that’s supposed to “scare kids straight” but which, in reality, just insults the intelligence of the children it targets. Fortunately for my high school-age brother, Rochester schools have since dropped the program.
D.A.R.E. force-feeds lies and propaganda to our kids about relatively benign drugs like marijuana, equating recreational pot use with hard-core heroin addiction. When kids find out that they’ve been lied to about pot, they make the perfectly reasonable conclusion that everything else was a lie too–so why not go ahead and try heroin or speed?
