Dare to Offer Kids Free Drugs Again
Why "Just Say No" Doesn't Work
A popular program for preventing teen drug utilize does not assist. Here's what does
"Only say no." In 1982 First Lady Nancy Reagan uttered those three words in response to a schoolgirl who wanted to know what she should say if someone offered her drugs. The first lady'south suggestion soon became the blaring phone call for the adolescent drug prevention motility in the 1980s and beyond. Since and then, schools around the country have instituted programs designed to discourage alcohol and drug use amongst youth—most of them targeting older elementary schoolchildren and a few addressing adolescents.
There is proficient reason for business organization about youth substance abuse. A large U.S. survey conducted in 2012 past psychologist Lloyd D. Johnston and his colleagues at the University of Michigan revealed that fully 24 pct of 12th graders had engaged in rampage drinking (defined as v or more than drinks on 1 occasion) in the past two weeks. Moreover, 42 percentage had consumed at to the lowest degree some alcohol in the by month, as had 11 percent of eighth graders and 28 pct of high school sophomores. In addition, 1 percent of twelfth graders had tried methamphetamine, and most 3 percentage had used cocaine in the past twelvemonth.
In an effort to reduce these figures, substance abuse prevention programs often brainwash pupils regarding the perils of drug utilize, teach students social skills to resist peer pressure to experiment, and help immature people experience that saying no is socially adequate. All the approaches seem sensible on the surface, so policy makers, teachers and parents typically assume they piece of work. Yet it turns out that approaches involving social interaction work better than the ones emphasizing education. That finding may explain why the near pop prevention program has been found to exist ineffective—and may even heighten the use of some substances amid teens.
Rehearsing Refusal
The nearly widely publicized teen substance abuse prevention program is Drug Corruption Resistance Teaching, better known by the acronym D.A.R.Eastward. Created in 1983 by the Los Angeles Police Section, D.A.R.E. asks uniformed police officers to become into schools to warn students near the dangers of drug use and underscore the pluses of a drug-free fashion of life. In near cases, the officers do and then one time a week, typically for 45 to 60 minutes, for several months. D.A.R.Eastward. is immensely pop; according to the program Web site, it has been put in place in 75 percent of U.S. school districts and 43 countries. D.A.R.East. bumper stickers, D.A.R.East. T-shirts, and police cars emblazoned with the give-and-take D.A.R.E. are familiar fixtures in many U.S. communities.
Despite this fanfare, data indicate that the programme does fiddling or aught to combat substance apply in youth. A meta-analysis (mathematical review) in 2009 of 20 controlled studies by statisticians Wei Pan, then at the University of Cincinnati, and Haiyan Bai of the University of Central Florida revealed that teens enrolled in the program were just equally likely to apply drugs as were those who received no intervention.
A few clues to D.A.R.Eastward.'s deficiencies come from psychologist Pim Cuijpers of the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction in Utrecht. In a review of 30 studies published in 2002, she attempted to pinpoint the common elements of successful programs. Cuijpers reported that the about effective ones involve substantial amounts of interaction betwixt instructors and students. They teach students the social skills they need to reject drugs and give them opportunities to practice these skills with other students—for instance, past request students to play roles on both sides of a chat near drugs, while instructors motorcoach them most what to say and do. In add-on, programs that work take into account the importance of behavioral norms: they emphasize to students that substance utilize is not especially common and thereby attempt to counteract the misconception that abnegation from drugs makes a person an oddball.
In a 2011 review of various substance abuse prevention programs, epidemiologist Melissa Stigler of the University of Texas School of Public Health and her colleagues buttressed these conclusions. They farther observed that programs that unfold during many sessions—ideally, over several years—garner particularly stiff results, probably because they provide students with lessons that are reinforced over time, as children mature and encounter different environments.
D.A.R.E. lacks some of these fundamental elements. It typically lasts only months rather than years. Moreover, it affords students few opportunities to practice how to refuse offers of drugs. Indeed, Cuijpers noted that purely educational programs that involve minimal or no direct social interaction with other students are usually ineffective. Just telling participants to "just say no" to drugs is unlikely to produce lasting effects because many may lack the needed interpersonal skills. Programs led exclusively past adults, with little or no involvement of students as peer leaders—another mutual feature of D.A.R.Due east.—seem relatively unsuccessful, again probably because students get petty practice saying no to other kids.
Good Intentions That Backfire
Worse, D.A.R.East. programs might occasionally backfire when information technology comes to the use of milder substances, such every bit booze and cigarettes. In a 2002 review psychologist Chudley Werch, now president of PreventionPLUSWellness in Jacksonville, Fla., and health educator Deborah Owen of the University of Northward Florida reported a slight trend for teens who went through D.A.R.East. to be more likely to drink and smoke than adolescents not exposed to the program. Small negative effects for D.A.R.Eastward.-like programs on drinking and smoking were also reported in a 2009 study by public health professor Zili Sloboda of the University of Akron and her colleagues. The reasons for these potential boomerang effects are unclear. Yet past emphasizing the hazards of severe drug abuse, D.A.R.E. may inadvertently convey the impression that alcohol and tobacco are innocuous by comparison.
These scientific findings stand up in stark contrast to the belief, held by scores of schoolteachers and parents, that D.A.R.Eastward. works. One reason for this discrepancy, clinical psychologist Donald R. Lynam, at present at Purdue Academy, and his colleagues wrote in a 1999 article, is that teachers and parents may overestimate the prevalence of substance use among children. As a effect, they may assume a decline in employ when students of D.A.R.E. abstain from alcohol and drugs. But that conclusion is erroneous if children who did not receive drug prevention didactics display levels of drug use that are just as low, if non lower. In improver, equally Lynam and his colleagues observe, D.A.R.E. makes intuitive sense: it seems plausible that nigh children exposed to authority figures who warn that drug use is unsafe would hesitate to disobey those admonitions.
The good news is that some proponents of D.A.R.E. are at present heeding the negative inquiry findings and incorporating potentially effective elements, such as function playing with peers, into the intervention. Enquiry on these revised programs should soon tell us whether they volition brand a paring in the considerable problem of substance abuse among vulnerable youth.
This article was originally published with the title "Just Say No?" in SA Mind 25, ane, 70-71 (Jan 2014)
doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0114-lxx
Farther Reading
Projection DARE: No Furnishings at 10-Yr Follow-Upward. Donald R. Lynam et al. in Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 67, No. four, pages 590–593; August 1999.
Interventions for Reducing Adolescent Alcohol Corruption: A Meta-Analytic Review. Stephen J. Tripodi, Kimberly Bough, Christy Litschge and Michael Thou. Vaughn in Athenaeum of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Vol. 164, No. 1, pages 85–91; January 2010.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-just-say-no-doesnt-work/
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