PARENTS CAN HELP PREVENT TEEN DRUG USE

Mike Moore's Dec. 26 column offered excellent advice on preventing
adolescent drug use.

The importance of parental involvement in reducing drug use cannot be
overstated. School-based extracurricular activities also have been
shown to reduce use. They keep kids busy during the hours they're
most likely to get into trouble.

In order for drug prevention efforts to effectively reduce harm, they
must be reality-based. The most popular drug and the one most closely
associated with violent behavior is often overlooked by parents. That
drug is alcohol, and it takes far more lives each year than all
illegal drugs combined. Alcohol may be legal, but it's still the No.
1 drug problem.

For decades, school-based drug prevention efforts have been dominated
by sensationalist programs like Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Good
intentions are no substitute for effective drug education.
Independent evaluations of D.A.R.E. have found the program to be
either ineffective or counterproductive.

D.A.R.E's scare tactics do more harm than good. Students who realize
they've been lied to about marijuana may make the mistake of assuming
that harder drugs like meth are relatively harmless as well. This is
a recipe for disaster. Drug education programs must be reality-based
or they may backfire when kids are inevitably exposed to drug use
among their peers.

The following U.S. Government Accounting Office report confirms my
claims regarding DARE: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03172r.pdf

Robert Sharpe, MPA
Policy Analyst
Common Sense for Drug Policy
http://www.csdp.org
P.O. Box 59181
Washington, DC 20012