COPS IN THE CLASSROOM - A LONGITUDINAL EVALUATION OF DRUG-ABUSE RESISTANCE EDUCATION (DARE)

Although aggressive enforcement programs have been the backbone of our national drug control policy, school-based drug education has been wi dely praised as the most promising strategy for achieving long-term re ductions in the demand for drugs and alcohol. Employing specially trai ned police of officers in the classroom, Project DARE has become Ameri ca's most popular and prevalent drug education program. Despite this s tatus, the effectiveness of the program has yet to be demonstrated. A longitudinal randomized experiment was conducted with 1,584 students t o estimate the effects of DARE on their attitudes, beliefs, and drug u se behaviors in the year following exposure to the program. DARE had n o statistically significant main effects on drug use behaviors and had few effects on attitudes or beliefs about drugs. However significant interactions between DARE and other factors (e.g., metropolitan status ) suggest that some program effects varied across subgroups of the tar get population. This research provides a rest of the comprehensive mod el of school-based prevention and helps to identify possible different ial effects of this drug education initiative.