Drug Abuse among Our Nation's Youth - Essay Example

? D.A.R.E. – The Effectiveness of a School Based Drug Program Literary Review Anthony D. Richardson Middle Tennessee Dr. Pam Scott Introduction Drug abuse among our nations’ youth has been a problem that has plagued America for years. America has waged a war on drugs on many different fronts, and perhaps one of the most controversial battlegrounds has been the schools within America. In an effort to educate children on the evils of drug use, drug education programs have been implemented to help deliver the message. It is not clear if America is winning the war on drugs and it may be even harder to determine who is winning the battle within the classrooms. The most prevalent drug education program in existence is the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, commonly referred to as D.A.R.E. This is a program currently taught in all 50 states as well as in foreign countries and is in the vast majority of all school systems. Despite its immense popularity, there has been great debate in whether or not the program is successfully maintaining its own goals of preventing the nations’ youth from engaging in substance use/abuse. In this paper, I will present arguments and studies both for and against the program and its effectiveness. This paper will also demonstrate that with all the research that has been examined in the debate over the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. program, there may be crucial questions that have not yet been addressed that might further reveal D.A.R.E.’s influence on youth. Literature Review The following literature review attempts to demonstrate and support the hypothesis that the D.A.R.E. program is effective in combating drug use among the nations’ youth. Ennet et al., (1994) carried out a research to analyze the effectiveness of D.A.R.E program in meta-analysis. In their research, the analyzed eighteen studies in twelve states and one province in Canada, and used the following criteria: (1) Use a control group of non-DARE participants. (2) Pre-test-post-test design or post-test only with random assignment. (3) Use of operationalized quantitative outcome measures. The results obtained suggested that the core curriculum of the D.A.R.E. programs’ effects on drug use relative to any other type of drug education is light except for tobacco use, which is not significant for statistics purposes. In two of their studies, there was reliable information on the long-term effects of the program. However, there was no indication D.A.R.E’s effectiveness deters individuals from using drugs even at their adult stage. In illuminating some light on Ennet et al., (1994), (Hansen, et al. 1988) conducted, a study to that aimed at preventing multiple substances among seventh grade students. In their research, two drug abuse prevention curricula tested aimed at determining their efficacy in preventing the onset of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use among adolescents. The first program focused on prevention through social pressure resistance training, while the second featured affective education approaches to prevention. A test on curricula was on seventh grade students. Subjects were pretested just prior to the program and post-tested at 12 and 24 months. Post-test analyses indicated that the social program delivered to seventh grade subjects was effective in delaying the onset of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use. There was no preventive effect of the affective education program was observed. By the final post-test, classrooms that had received the affective program had significantly more drug use than controls. A study conducted in 1991 suggested that two strategies for preventing the onset of alcohol abuse and marijuana and cigarette use were tested in junior high schools in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, California. The first strategy taught skills to refuse substance use offers. The second strategy corrected erroneous normative perceptions about prevalence and acceptability of use among peers and established conservative groups norms regarding use. Four experimental conditions were created by randomly assigning schools to receive (a) neither of the experimental curricula (placebo comparison), (b) resistance skill training alone, (c) normative education alone, or (d) both resistance skill training and normative education. Students were pretested prior to the program and post-tested 1 year following delivery of the program. There were main effects of normative education for summary measures of alcohol (P = 0.0011), marijuana (P = 0.0096), and cigarette smoking (P = 0.0311). All individual dichotomous measures of alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco use indicated significant reductions in onset attributable to normative education. There were no significant main effects of resistance skill training. These results suggest that establishing conservative norms is an effective strategy for preventing substance use (Hansen, & Graham, 1991). In 1995, an evaluation was completed examining 3,150 Ohio 11th graders, which looked into the long-term effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. program (Donnermeyer & Phillips, 1995). This study included 11th graders who had participated in the D.A.R.E. program at the elementary level only. This was in addition to 11th graders who had participated in the program at the elementary level, as well as, the high school level, and 11th graders never exposed to the program. The results indicated that those students that had participated in the program at both the elementary and high school levels showed the lowest level of drug involvement. A Gallup Youth Survey conducted between Jan. 22 and March 9, 2004 was conducted, stating that one in five teenagers (20%) said they have tried marijuana (79% said they have not), and about 3 in 10 (27%) said they have used alcohol (72% said they have not). These percentages are similar to those found in 2003; according to the January-February 2003 Gallup Youth Survey, 20% of teens said, they had used marijuana, and 30% said they had used alcohol (Gallup Survey, 2003). A study written in Health Communication in 2006, evaluated the Drug Resistance Strategies (DRS) project, a culturally grounded, communication-based drug prevention program implemented in 35 middle schools in Phoenix, Arizona. The intervention consisted of 10 lessons taught by the classroom teacher that imparted the knowledge, motivation, and skills needed to resist drug offers. The evaluation used growth modeling to analyze significant differences in average post intervention substance use (alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana) and growth of use over the course of study. The study involved 6,298 seventh graders (65% Mexican/Mexican American) who responded to at least 1 of 4 questionnaires (1 pretest and 3 follow-up measures). When compared to a control group, the DRS intervention appeared to limit the increase in the number of students reporting recent substance use, especially alcohol and marijuana use. The multicultural version of the curriculum proved most broadly effective, followed by the version targeting Mexican American youth (Hecht, Graham, Elek, 2006). The effects of the keepin' it REAL classroom videotapes and televised PSA’s on middle-school students' substance use A study sought to determine if exposure to two communication-oriented activities, printed in the Journal of Applied Communication (Warren, et al., 2006). This study sought to determine if exposure to two communication-oriented activities, videotapes and public service announcements, accounts for changes in substance use among adolescents participating in the Drug Resistance Strategies Project’s keeping’ it REAL adolescent substance use prevention curriculum. Middle-school students (4,734, 72% Latino) responded to questionnaires related to these analyses. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) model fitted separately to six substance use outcomes. The results suggested that intervention students who watched four or five videos engaged in less substance use in the past month than did students who watched fewer videos. However, observing the PSAs one or more times did not predict the reported change in substance use. As researched by Kulis, et al (2007), efforts to address youth substance use have focused on prevention among non-users and treatment among severe users that have been ignored, yet the abuse is not yet addictive. Using a sample from 35 middle schools of 1,364 youth who reported using substances, this study examined the effectiveness of a universal youth substance use prevention program, the SAMHSA Model Program keepin' it REAL, in promoting reduced or recently discontinued alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. Discrete-time event history methods modeled the rates of reduced and recently discontinued use across four waves of data. Each substance (alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana) was modeled separately. Starting at the second wave, participants who reported use at wave 1 were considered at risk of reducing or discontinuing use. Given that, the data sampled students in schools, multi-level models accounted for the nesting of data at the school level. Results indicated that prevention program participation influenced the rates of reduced and recently discontinued use only for alcohol, controlling for baseline use severity, age, grades, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and gender. In 2009, D.A.R.E. adopted the keepin’ it REAL curriculum to yield more effective results, Keepin’ it REAL is an evidence-based, theoretically- and culturally-grounded substance use prevention program for primary and secondary school students. Rather than solely focusing on the perils of alcohol and drugs, keepin’ it REAL utilizes socio- emotional learning theory and life skills approach to conceptualize substance use resistance as a situated, contextualized process and emphasizes communication competence as central to effective resistance strategies. Keepin’ it REAL also is unique because of its culturally grounded approach that acknowledges the importance of cultural differences and similarities in the effectiveness of communication strategies and norms surrounding substance use. Two randomized clinical trials have demonstrated the effectiveness of the multicultural keepin’ it REAL for reducing substance use across grade levels and ethnic/racial groups, which highlights the importance of grounding substance use prevention programs in their audiences’ cultural attitudes, values, norms, and beliefs (Hecht, Colby & Miller-Day, 2010). Since keepin’, it REAL was designed as a school-based program to be implemented by teachers, the creators of keepin’ it REAL located at the Pennsylvania State University worked with D.A.R.E. to adapt the program for police officers. Formative research was conducted to determine the most appropriate way to adapt keepin’ it REAL to police-officer culture rather than teacher culture, and D.A.R.E. keepin’ it REAL is being implemented and evaluated in the U.S. and other countries (Hecht, Colby & Miller-Day, 2010). DARE is very popular with students, school administrators, police, and the public. This, in spite of the fact that, research over the decades has repeatedly demonstrated that DARE is not only ineffective, but also sometimes counterproductive. That is, students who graduate from DARE are sometimes more likely than others to drink or do drugs. The following literature reviews illustrates the ineffectiveness of D.A.R.E program. According to an article published on the Family Council for Drug Awareness website, D.A.R.E. program is costly and ineffective. It wastes educational and police resources. The link between schools and drug police has become a sacred cow that leads to a false sense of security, despite clear evidence that DARE is a failure. Since its curriculum went national, two patterns have emerged: more students now do drugs, and they start using drugs at an earlier age (FCDA, 2004). A 1996 study conducted in Dade County, Flora conducted by Marianne Strusinski, Coordinator and Evaluation Specialist, and Joseph J. Gomez, Supervisor for Office of Educational Accountability, Dade County Public Schools, Miami, Florida (enrollment 333,000). The study compared participants of the D.A.R.E. program to non-participants and revealed the following information in regards to drug use. Prior to the D.A.R.E. groups’ exposure to the program, D.A.R.E. and Non-D.A.R.E. groups reported comparable drug use. After graduation from the D.A.R.E. program, differences in drug usage were few and exhibited no clear trend. Usage rates for the D.A.R.E. group and the comparison group remained comparable. Thus, it is apparent that the D.A.R.E. program did not achieve its primary goal of reducing drug use among its graduates (Strusinski & Gomez, 1996). In 1994, a study titled, “Long Term Evaluation of Drug abuse Resistance Education”, which was an evaluation in which; 1,800 students participated in a study regarding the effectiveness of D.A.R.E. for over a three year period. The study concluded that there was only limited support for D.A.R.E.’s impact on the student’s drug use immediately following the intervention, and no support for either continued or emerging impact on drug use once the subjects have made the transition to middle school. Cigarette smoking was the only drug use behavior on which D.A.R.E. had a significant effect, but even that effect disappeared a year later (Ennett & Rosenbaum, 1994). The ineffectiveness in students’ attitudes toward drug use is only one of the criticisms pointed out by anti-D.A.R.E. Advocates. Although the above-cited studies clearly point out that D.A.R.E. is not accomplishing its primary goal of having children to “just say no” to drugs, There are problems that are associated with D.A.R.E. An article written and published in the Washington Post in 1994 criticizes the D.A.R.E. program by stating that D.A.R.E. Instructors are using schoolchildren as informants to gather information that might later be used in criminal prosecutions. The official D.A.R.E. Officer’s guide contains a work sheet that instructs children to circle the names of people you could tell if a friend finds some pills. The “Police” are listed along with mother, father, friend, or teacher (Bovard, 1994). Methodology The primary purpose of this paper is to present an assessment of DARE applying qualitative and quantitative methods and determine its effectiveness in controlling drug abuse in schools. In addition, regression analysis will assist in investigating factors that influence various dimensions of fidelity. Moreover, for proper review of the literature and, in obtaining suitable results, the research in this paper was carried out using multiple electronic literatures databases. The literature used covers educational fields as well as education subjects, law enforcement and social sciences of D.A.R.E efficiency, options and assessments. A lot of emphasis was on the authentic primary studies and their allied follow-ups. Application of meta-analysis was mostly emphasized on secondary studies and other related literature evaluations used in previous studies, and at last non-scientific assessments of those reviews or the options used in DARE Program. When the non-scientific studies and evaluations are not included in academic assessment, they are reliable and valid when used with scholarly sources in referencing for journal and magazines, in order to avoid biasness during data assessment. For this reason, in this research paper, I preferred focusing my research towards achieving integrity and using a consistent scientific method, based on the literature review and the DARE program. The primary focus of this paper was to assess the efficiency of DARE program. The hypothesis of this research paper was the lack of efficiency, which not only existed in DARE but also devastating and irrefutable. This study intends to illustrate the significance of DARE, and whether there is a need to continue using it, or enhanced or considered inefficient. Conclusion Drug Abuse Resistance Education is a school based prevention program used in United States to fight drug abuse among students and young people. Even though it is considered as a prevention program it is not yet recognized collectively, some believe in its efficiency, while others refute its role. The evaluation conducts reveals that, in some circumstances the program sees effective while in others, it deteriorates the situation. in determining its efficiency, the research utilizes the quantitative and qualitative methods and uses students and teachers samples. In essence, almost every person commends the DARE program, except the scientific researchers who consider the ineffectiveness of the program. Every published report opposes the D.A.R.E program, and some even consider it counterproductive. Students embracing the program increased the rate of drug taking and alcohol consumption than those who ignored the program. However, even though the D.A.R.E program is disregarded, a certain group considers its efficiency in regulating drug abuse and substance. References Aniskiewicz, R. E. and E. E. Wysong. 1987. Project DARE Evaluation Report: Kokomo Schools Spring, 1987. Kokomo: Indiana University at Kokomo,Department of Sociology. Anonymous. 1987. Project DARE Evaluation, spring, 1987. Pittsburgh, PA. Bangert-Drowns, R. L. 1988. ‘The Effects of School-based Substance Abuse Education a Meta- analysis." Journal of Drug Education 18: 243-265. Battjes, R. J. 1985. "Prevention of Adolescent Drug Abuse." The International Journal of the Addictions 20: 1113-1124. Bauman, IC 1985. "A Study of Cigarette Smoking Behavior among Youth: Adolescent Questionnaire." Chapel Hill: Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina. Becker, H. R., M. E. Agopian, and S. Yeh. 1990. "Impact Evaluation of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE)." Journal of Drug Education 22: 283-291. Botvin, G. J. 1990. "Substance Abuse Prevention: Theory, Practice, and Effectiveness." In Drugs and Crime, edited by M. Towery 8c J. Q. Wilson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bovard, J. (1994, 01 24). Dare Scare: Turning Children into informants. Washington Post. D.A.R.E. America. (n.d.). Retrieved from Dare.com: http://www.dare.com/home/default.asp Bruvold, W. H. and T. G. Rundall. 1988. "A Meta-Analysis and Theoretical Review of School Based Tobacco and Alcohol Intervention Programs." Psychology and Health 2: 53-78. Carstens, S. J., D. J. Pecchia, and L. R. Rohach. 1989. DARE- Drug Abuse Resistance Education- Is It Jerking. Mmnesota: Robinsdale Area Schools, Independent School District 281. Clayton, R. R. 1987, and Project DARE FN Lexington: Evaluation of the Pilot Phase. Unpublished Report. University of Kentucky, Department of Sociology. Clayton, R. R., A. Cattarello, L. E. Day, and IC P. Walden. 1991a. "Persuasive Communication and Drug Prevention: An Evaluation of the DARE Program." In Persuasive Communication and Drug Abuse Prevention, edited by L. Donoher, H. Sypher, and W. Bukoski. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Eribaum Associates: 295-313. Donnermeyer, J. (1995). D.A.R.E. Works as reported by Ohio 11th Graders. Ennett, S.T., Rosenbaum, D. (1994). Long Term Evaluation of Drug abuse Resistance Education. Addictive Behaviors, 19:113-125. Ennett, S. T. (1994). How effective is Drug Abuse Resistance Education? A Meta-Analysis of Project Dare Outcome Evaluations. American Journal of Public Health, 1394-1399. Flay, B. R. 1985. 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America: A lesson in disseminating health messages.” Health Communication 25: 6–7. Kulis, S., Nieri, T., Yabiku, S., Stromwall, L. K., & Marsiglia, F. F. (2007). Promoting reduced and discontinued substance use among adolescent substance users: Effectiveness of a universal prevention program. Prevention Science, 8(1), 35-49. Strusinski, J.A. and Gomez, J. (1996) “Long-Term Evaluation of Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Addictive Behaviors 19: 113-125.20. Survey. G. (2004). Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com Warren, J. R., Hecht, M. L., Wagstaff, D. A., Elek, E., Ndiaye, K., Dustman, P., (2006). Communicating prevention: The effects of the keepin' it REAL classroom videotapes and televised PSA’s on middle-school students' substance use. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 34(2), 209-227. Read More