Goodbye DARE — more schools are embracing realistic drug education
Arming students with facts empowers them to educate people around them, whether they choose to use drugs or not.
Like millions of people in the United States, I participated in Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), the iconic drug education program rooted in the abstinence-only, “just say no” message of the Reagan administration. DARE was run by police officers who made frequent visits to our fifth-grade classroom. It was the mid-90s, and the cops informed us that using drugs would surely ruin our minds, turning us into glassy-eyed zombies, turning us hopelessly addicted and leading us straight to jail. Marijuana was a dangerous “gateway” to this awful life. We pledged never to use drugs.
The contradictions were unavoidable by the time I entered high school. By then, medical marijuana was making headlines, and researchers had determined that illegal weed was less harmful than legal cigarettes and alcohol. Parents smoked pot, just like famous musicians. Adderall and other stimulants that can produce a long-lasting buzz were systematically overprescribed to teenagers and were readily available at school. Older students I looked up to used drugs, and their lives didn’t go down the drain. They were star athletes and honor students winning college scholarships. My friends joked about DARE as we popped pills and smoked cigarettes at the bowling alley, where a former DARE police officer got hammered at the bar.
Of course, illicit drug use can have consequences. Some of my friends were arrested or kicked out of school for days at a time, increasing the likelihood that they would be further criminalized and incarcerated. A few developed serious addictions, a problem I would see more and more as I grew older. I lost half a dozen friends to opioid overdoses before I was trained to administer the lifesaving overdose-reversal drug naloxone in my late 20s (to learn more about overdose prevention, click here). By that time, communities across the nation were facing a burgeoning overdose crisis that would claim hundreds of thousands of lives and begin to change the public conversation about drugs to one that focuses on addressing health needs — and not a moment too soon.
Learning about how to administer naloxone was one of the most important lessons of my adult life. That’s why I was excited to chat with Drew Miller, a health teacher at Bard Early College High School in New York City. Miller’s students learn about how to identify and respond to an overdose during a CONTINUE READING: Goodbye DARE — more schools are embracing realistic drug education | Salon.com