I had the occassion to attend a D.A.R.E. program graduation yesterday.   For those of you without children (and perhaps living in isolation), D.A.R.E. is short for "Drug Abuse Resistance Education."   The program started long ago to combat our nation's drug problem, which is still a significant one.   It tries to reach out to kids before they enter the danger zone - junior and senior high school - where they will be temped, even assaulted, by all kinds of intoxicants by their peers.   The program is effective and I do not wish to in any way speak poorly of it.   The police recognize that much of the bad aspects of their jobs would be eliminated or at least reduced if this country could ever stop using all these illegal drugs.   They teach the kids techniques suitable to their ages for dealing with peer pressure.   But lately I've come to recognize that it is getting a little off track.   What I mean is it is placing too much emphasis on things which are not illegal and do not lead to the problem of violence and gangs which plagues us.

Over the past few years D.A.R.E. has come to emphasize tobacco, alcohol, and bullying.   If you check out the curriculum on the organization's site, you will find its mission is to teach "kids how to recognize and resist the direct and subtle pressures that influence them to experiment with alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drugs."   Now I'm not saying alcohol and tobacco should be promoted to children but let's get real.   When is the last time you read about a drive-by shooting involving a gang which made its money peddling cigarettes or beer to kids?   How does dealing with bullying have anything to do with gangs or pushing your friends to smoke a joint because it's fun?   How does it help anyone to teach kids that their parents who might be smokers or take a drink now and then should never again to be trusted?

Why should we speak of "other drugs" yet name the tamest ones?   Wasn't D.A.R.E.'s mission meant to combat cocaine, crack, heroin, PCP, crystal meth, etc.   Why not explain to these kids exactly what these drugs do in terms of the intoxicating effect and all the negative consequences thereof?   Yesterday I sat through the essays of selected kids, including my own, who had grasped the real message of the program.   Every kid included commentary about tobacco - in fact that was about 30% of the whole.   Every kid mentioned alcohol - that covered another 20%.   Most mentioned bullying - another 10%.   Some few of the essays failed to mention any illegal drug whatsoever and none of them mentioned any hard drug by name.

It was upsetting when you consider that I feel perfectly capable of keeping my kids away from cigarettes and keeping their use of alcohol responsible and smart.   I'm not saying I will be able to protect them from alcoholism or becoming smokers but I can at least handle that aspect of things as well as the police can.   But I simply don't know what to tell them about drugs when i can;t even call them by the names their friends will.   I can't teach them to avoid sniffing household chemicals when I don't even know which ones the kids are likely to favor these days.   As far as I know, there are no gangs in my schools.   if that's not the case, maybe that should be addresses as well.

Instead of channeling the effort to the drugs which still cause most of the crime in our society, I expect as the program progresses, it will focus ever more on politically correct subjects.   I expect we'll next hear about how to keep kids away from trans-fat or polluting the environment.   And still our drug problem will continue apace.