DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) failed because it did not reduce drug use. Despite becoming one of the most widely adopted school programs in American history, multiple rigorous studies found that students who completed DARE were no less likely to use drugs than students who never participated. A meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Public Health found that DARE’s effect on drug behavior was so small it was statistically indistinguishable from zero.
What the Research Actually Showed
DARE was good at exactly one thing: teaching kids facts about drugs. The meta-analysis found a moderate effect on drug knowledge (an effect size of .42), but knowledge alone didn’t translate into behavior change. The effect sizes tell the story clearly: .06 for drug behavior, .06 for self-esteem, and .11 for attitudes about drug use. For context, an effect size that small means you’d struggle to notice any difference between kids who went through DARE and kids who didn’t.
Breaking it down by substance, the numbers were even more discouraging. DARE’s effect on alcohol use was .06 and not statistically significant. Its effect on marijuana use was actually slightly negative (-.01), meaning DARE students were marginally more likely to use marijuana, though that finding also wasn’t significant. Only tobacco use showed a small, statistically significant reduction (.08). In other words, DARE spent millions of dollars to produce a barely measurable dip in cigarette use and nothing else.
No Lasting Impact at All
Even if DARE had produced modest short-term results, they didn’t last. A landmark study followed over 1,000 students for a full decade after they received DARE in sixth grade. By age 20, there were virtually no differences between DARE graduates and students who had received standard drug education. DARE students didn’t use fewer drugs, didn’t have more negative attitudes toward drugs, and didn’t have higher self-esteem. In no case did the DARE group outperform the comparison group on any measure.
Some studies went further, reporting a “boomerang effect” in which youth who received DARE actually reported higher lifetime drug use than students who skipped the program entirely. While this finding wasn’t universal across all studies, even the possibility that a prevention program could backfire highlights a fundamental design problem.
Wrong Age, Wrong Messenger, Wrong Method
DARE’s original curriculum consisted of 10 sessions delivered to fifth and sixth graders by uniformed police officers. Nearly every element of that design conflicted with what actually works in prevention education.
The age targeting was off. Fifth and sixth graders generally aren’t using drugs yet, so the program was trying to prevent a behavior that wasn’t happening. By the time those students reached high school, where drug experimentation peaks, the DARE lessons were years in the rearview mirror with no reinforcement. More effective programs like Life Skills Training spread their sessions across seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, delivering 30 class sessions during the years when students actually face pressure to use substances.
Using police officers as instructors created its own problems. Trustworthiness is a key component of effective teaching, and for many students, particularly students of color, a uniformed officer didn’t represent a trusted authority figure. Research has shown that police presence in schools can contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline, and the dynamic between an officer and a classroom of kids is fundamentally different from the dynamic between a trained educator and students. An 80-hour training program taught officers the curriculum, but it didn’t transform them into teachers. They still behaved primarily as law enforcement.
The teaching method was the biggest problem. DARE relied on lectures and scare tactics, both of which had already been shown to be ineffective at changing student behavior. A study by the Research Triangle Institute found that DARE’s lecture-based approach had minimal effect and that interactive programs were far more desirable. Kids sat and listened to an officer tell them drugs were dangerous. They didn’t practice skills, role-play difficult social situations, or engage in the kind of interactive learning that actually builds the ability to resist peer pressure in real-world moments.
Fear-Based Messaging Backfired
DARE’s curriculum leaned heavily on communicating that all drugs were dangerous, all the time, with no room for nuance. This created a credibility gap. When students eventually encountered peers who used marijuana without immediately ruining their lives, or when they learned that cannabis was being legalized in various states, the program’s black-and-white framing fell apart. If DARE was wrong about that, kids reasoned, maybe it was wrong about everything.
The program also refused to engage honestly with students’ real questions. When a student asked why cannabis was legal if it was so bad, the standard response was a rigid reminder that it was illegal for anyone under 18. That didn’t answer the question. It obscured information and dismissed the student’s own observations and experiences. Effective education works through “co-creation,” where students and teachers collaborate to explore knowledge together. DARE did the opposite, prioritizing its anti-drug message over genuine understanding.
Why It Stayed Popular Despite the Evidence
DARE’s persistence is itself a case study in how good intentions and political appeal can outweigh evidence. The program was enormously popular with parents, school administrators, and police departments. It gave communities a visible, tangible response to the drug crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. T-shirts, bumper stickers, and graduation ceremonies made it feel like something was being done. Politicians could point to DARE funding as proof they were tough on drugs.
The program also built deep institutional roots. Police departments invested in training officers, schools scheduled it into their calendars, and DARE America became a well-funded organization. Challenging DARE meant challenging law enforcement, concerned parents, and the politically potent idea that we should be “doing something” about drugs in schools. As the 10-year follow-up study noted, the researchers themselves explored why DARE remained so popular despite lacking documented efficacy. The answer had less to do with evidence and more to do with perception.
DARE’s Attempt to Reinvent Itself
In 2012, DARE’s Scientific Advisory Board recognized the problem and advised the organization to adopt a new curriculum called “keepin’ it REAL” (kiR), an evidence-based program originally developed by prevention researchers. The new version was designed to be more interactive, incorporating discussion, demonstration, and role-play instead of lectures. It focused on five developmental skills: self-awareness, responsible decision making, understanding others, communication, and handling challenges. The program also added take-home family activities to extend its reach beyond the classroom.
But the revamped program kept one of the original’s most criticized features: uniformed police officers delivering the lessons. Critics argue this undermines the curriculum’s goals, because the dynamics of having a law enforcement officer lead a classroom discussion haven’t fundamentally changed. The officer-student relationship still carries an authority imbalance that discourages the open, trust-based dialogue the new curriculum is supposed to foster. A systematic review of middle school prevention curricula, including both DARE and other programs, found that 75% of the evaluated programs showed no statistically significant positive effects at final follow-up.
DARE’s failure wasn’t about bad intentions. It was about building a massive national program on assumptions about what should work rather than evidence about what does work, and then defending that program for decades after the data made the answer clear.