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SUMMARY
The
Office of the Auditor General has conducted a performance audit of the Drug
Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) Program within the Department of Public
Safety (Department), pursuant to a June 16, 1999, resolution of the Joint
Legislative Audit Committee. The audit was conducted under the authority vested
in the Auditor General by Arizona Revised Statutes (A.R.S.) §41-2951 et seq.
This audit is the third in a series of audits examining programs within the
Department. The Department coordinates state and regional training and provides
technical assistance for the D.A.R.E. program.
D.A.R.E.
is a school-based drug prevention program that uses trained, uniformed police
officers to deliver its curriculum. The D.A.R.E. curriculum is primarily
directed toward 5th- or 6th-grade students, the age at
which prevention experts believe youth are most receptive to school-based drug
prevention programs. Created in 1983, D.A.R.E. is currently taught in all 50
states and 52 countries, making it the largest school-based drug education
program in the world. Arizona first offered the D.A.R.E. program in 1986, and
during the 1999 school year, police officers taught D.A.R.E. in 576 of 1,481
schools, or almost 40 percent of the State’s public K-12 schools.
Department Should Work
With the
Drug and Gang Policy Council to
Determine Its Future Involvement
with D.A.R.E.
(See pages 9 through 19)
The
Department should work with the Drug and Gang Policy Council to determine if its
continued participation in the D.A.R.E. program is in the State’s best
interest. Despite D.A.R.E.’s popularity and widespread use, over a decade of
peer-reviewed, scientific research has failed to show that the program’s most
widely used component, the core curriculum, has any lasting impact on preventing
or reducing adolescent substance abuse behavior. In addition, auditors’
exhaustive literature
search confirmed that D.A.R.E.’s impact is mixed, at best, over the short-term
and virtually nonexistent over the long-term.
D.A.R.E.
proponents are critical of the research for various reasons. As an example, they
suggest that the research is no longer valid because it evaluated a curriculum
that has since been changed. While there have been revisions to the program,
such as adding a lesson on managing conflict and reducing violence, the goals,
focus, and method of delivery have remained the same. Therefore, some
researchers indicate that the curriculum changes have not been significant
enough to warrant invalidation of these studies. D.A.R.E. proponents are also
critical of the research because they believe that the program offers other
benefits aside from whatever impact it may or may not have on preventing or
reducing substance abuse, such as enhanced police and community relations. In
addition, the program has strong public support.
However,
despite the program’s popularity, some communities are choosing to replace
D.A.R.E. with other drug prevention programs. While no other prevention program
has been studied as extensively as D.A.R.E., there is an emerging body of
research that suggests other programs may be more effective in reducing
adolescent substance abuse. In addition, various federal and state agencies are
also developing program guides to assist communities in selecting effective
programs. For example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s
Center for Substance Abuse and Arizona’s Drug and Gang Policy Council have
each developed guidelines for selecting effective programs. To date, D.A.R.E. is
not among the programs listed.
The Department has an
opportunity to help ensure that Arizona’s drug prevention efforts are
effective. The Department is a member of the Arizona Drug and Gang Policy
Council, which has a statutory mandate to evaluate the results achieved by
publicly supported education, treatment, and prevention programs and make
recommendations for revising programs or redirecting expenditures to achieve
better use of public resources. Given the questions concerning the effectiveness
of the D.A.R.E. program and emerging research on other programs, the Department
should work with the Council to determine whether it is in the State’s best
interest for the Department to continue to participate in the D.A.R.E. program.
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