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Jacob's avatar

I wanted to pile on the D.A.R.E. stuff because my son went through it and told me at the time what a crock it was.

On the plus side, according to the meta-study you linked to, it did make parents and teachers feel good about themselves: "Nonetheless, the parents were positive about the D.A.R.E. program because they viewed the D.A.R.E. officers as effective educators [6]; the classroom teachers’ also gave their high ratings to teacher-officer interaction, role-playing exercises, and graduation ceremony." So we've got that going for us. But I do kind of feel like they could have discovered the same thing just by talking to any random group of kids who have been through D.A.R.E. in the past 40 years.

By the way, the program costs about $100 per student. I feel like we could get better results if we said to kids "if you stay drug-free for a year, we'll give you $100 and a nice ersatz graduation ceremony".

Say what you will about Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, at least it was cheap.

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Ron Ghosh's avatar

Raw beef and Ulysses is for losers -- raw pork and The Sorrows of Young Werther is where it's at!

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