Drug Abuse Resistance Education - Criticism

Criticism

The D.A.R.E. program is consistent with the "zero-tolerance orthodoxy of current U.S. drug control policy." According to researcher Dr. D. M. Gorman of the Rutgers University Center of Alcohol Studies, it supports the ideology and the “prevailing wisdom that exists among policy makers and politicians." It also meets the needs of stake holders such as school districts, parents, and law enforcement agencies. "D.A.R.E. America also has been very successful in marketing its program to the news media through a carefully orchestrated public relations campaign that highlights its popularity while downplaying criticism."

Psychologists at the University of Kentucky concluded that "continued enthusiasm shows Americans' stubborn resistance to apply science to drug policy."

Marsha Rosenbaum, who headed the West Coast office of the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy reform organization, provided an opinion for a 1999 Village Voice article, "In D.A.R.E.'s worldview, Marlboro Light cigarettes, Bacardi rum, and a drag from a joint are all equally dangerous. For that matter, so is snorting a few lines of cocaine." D.A.R.E. "isn't really education. It's indoctrination." Rosenbaum also stated, "Part of what makes D.A.R.E. so popular is that participants get lots of freebies. There are fluorescent yellow pens with the D.A.R.E. logo, tiny D.A.R.E. dolls, bumper stickers, graduation certificates, D.A.R.E. banners for school auditoriums, D.A.R.E. rulers, pennants, D.A.R.E. coloring books, and T-shirts for all D.A.R.E. graduates."

Read more about this topic:  Drug Abuse Resistance Education

Famous quotes containing the word criticism:

    A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.
    Rebecca West (1892–1983)

    In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)

    Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.
    Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)