Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive From: Robert G HalvorsonSubject: The Dark Side of DARE Message-ID: <1993Jul29.215310.14741@mont.cs.missouri.edu> Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1993 21:53:10 GMT The Dark Side of DARE by Pastor Jaymes Douglass Fyr Police officers visiting schools - anti-drug programs - neither one is new. I remember being told as a child "the policeman is your friend." I still have the worn old book preaching against drugs and alcohol from high school. These things have been ar ound for decades. Now they have come together. Former Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates created the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program in 1983 as a joint effort of the police department and the L.A. school district to fight drug use in the city's schools. It has since spread nationwide and abroad, as far away as Australia and New Zealand. Millions have been exposed to it. So what is DARE? In most forms it consists of 17 one hour sessions, held weekly and covering subjects ranging from refusal skills to alternatives to drug use. It is taught by uniformed police officers and usually begins with fifth graders. Funding comes from both governmental and private sources. Nothing is wrong with teaching anybody of any age to assert themselves and think for themselves. Teens often have a hard time saying "no." Breaking the back of peer pressure is hard to do. And this can also help reject pressure to engage in unwanted sex and other temptations. What makes DARE different is having police officers teach the classes. That's kind of like having teachers arrest muggers. That's not their job - it's not what they have been trained to do. Why not have public health officials lecture about the harmfu l aspects of drugs? To be balanced, why not invite NORML members or Native American shamans to tell how drugs can be used in beneficial ways? Is the information presented truthful? For example, the discredited research of Dr. Gabriel Nahas is still tou ted about the supposed evils of marijuana use. Are alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and prescription drugs covered, or only "illegal" drugs. Is this an effort to promote awareness of health and safety, or just another attempt to enforce blind obedience to the law? And finally, is DARE really out to fight the "drug problem" by encouraging children to inform on people they know who use illegal drugs? The Wall Street Journal, in a front page article on April 20, 1992, reported the case of Crystal Grendell, a fifth grader who was asked if she knew anyone who used drugs. Crystal was taking DARE classes taught by Searsport, Maine, police chief James Gil lway in the spring of 1991. She was worried because her parents grew and smoked marijuana. She didn't say anything at the time, but later went to Gillway and reported her parents. Six cops raided the family home, seized Crystal and 49 one foot high mar ijuana plants and arrested the parents. The mother lost her job and the father got one year's probation. Crystal's straight A's turned into C's, she now fears the police and frequently has nightmares. The article also mentions other parents who have be en turned in by their children - at the instigation of DARE. Parents' anti-DARE groups are beginning to form. A lady from L.A. told me that her child had broken down under interrogation and admitted that "mom smokes pot." This lady received a stern lec ture from local child protective "services." But DARE is wildly popular among politicians, school administrators and cops! Every cop car in town has a DARE bumper sticker on it. Lots of civilian cars have them too. You see people everywhere wearing DARE t-shirts. I even recently saw a black city bus plastered with the DARE logo and slogan, in big red letters. It's an election year, everybody! Climb onto the politically correct bandwagon! Didn't the Hitler Youth and the KGB indoctrinate children in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union? Weren't children encouraged to spy on their parents? Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's wrong and just because it's legal doesn't make it r ight. Wasn't Hitler elected to power according to German law? Weren't the laws persecuting Jews enacted by due process? The "War on Drugs" is now using our children as its eyes and ears, having failed with drug screenings and inaccurate propaganda. It's not enough that they demand to analyze samples of our hair and urine; not enough to fly helicopters over houses with he at detectors to find hidden growrooms in attics; not enough that they seize utility records to see how much electricity we use. Now they deputize our kids to be their spies! All to coerce people into mindless compliance with racist laws enacted long before most people now alive had even been born. The dark side of DARE. The dark side of our government. The dark side of ourselves! "Our society's appetite for narcotics and dangerous drugs has reached epidemic proportions. "The illicit drug problem stretches from elementary school campuses into prestigious corporate structures. Ridding ourselves of this slow but certain death is not a simple task. We must have short-range and long-range solutions, from battering rams on 'rock houses' to immunization of our children through education. "The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program is our most promising long-range solution. It holds great promise for producing future generations of young adults who not only have no appetite for drugs, but also have the strength of character to dissuade others from drug abuse. "The Los Angeles Police Department and The Los Angeles Unified School District are but two members of the partnership needed to help D.A.R.E. achieve its promise. The other, and most important partners in this effort are the children's parents. All of us, working together, can save this nation's most vital resource, our children." Daryl Gates Former Chief of Police City of Los Angeles National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) 1636 'R' St. NW #3 Washington DC 20009 Western Washington University NORML Viking Union Room 202, Box E-9 Bellingham, WA 98225 Washington Citizens for Drug Policy Reform (WCDPR) P.O. Box 1614 Renton, WA 98057 Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) 5632 Van Nuys Blvd. Van Nuys, CA 91401 Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp (BACH) P.O. Box 71093 Los Angeles, CA 90071-0093 The Church of Hemp P.O. Box 1511 Bellingham, WA 98227-1511 "Look in the blind spot in the culture--the place where the culture isn't looking, because it dare not--because if it were to look there, it's previous values would dissolve. --Terrence McKenna Western Washington U, Viking Union, Box E-9, Bellingham, WA 98225 (206) 650-3460 norml@henson.cc.wwu.edu Kevin Keyes, Coordinator Robert Halvorson, Co-Cooridinator