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D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education)

Also: DARE · D.A.R.E. keepin' it REAL (from about 2009) · PROERD (Brazil)

“D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs”

School drug-prevention program started in 1983 by the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Unified School District, in which uniformed police officers teach a classroom curriculum on resisting drugs, alcohol and tobacco. It spread to most US school districts and dozens of countries before it was evaluated, and stayed in place after repeated trials and meta-analyses found no lasting effect.

Years
1983–now
Country
BrazilUnited States
Topic
AlcoholDrugsTobacco
Asks people to
Never start
Strategy
Self efficacyTrusted messenger
Channel
InterpersonalSchool
Audience
Youth
Mainly 5th and 6th graders, taught by police officers in class; later middle-school and Brazilian (PROERD) versions

Evidence

ExperimentalNo effect

Original curriculum: a meta-analysis of 8 rigorous evaluations found drug-use effect sizes of .00 to .11 (weighted mean .06), smaller than interactive programs (Ennett 1994); an updated meta-analysis found d = 0.023 (95% CI -0.04 to 0.08), not significant (West & O'Neal 2004). A randomized trial in 31 Kentucky schools found no difference in cigarette, alcohol or marijuana use over 5 years (Clayton 1996), and a 10-year follow-up of 1,002 students found no benefit on any outcome at age 20 (Lynam 1999). The officer-delivered 'Take Charge of Your Life' trial (83 school clusters, 17,320 students) found more alcohol and cigarette use among students who were non-users at baseline (Sloboda 2009). The refined version using the keepin' it REAL curriculum has little outcome evidence in its police-delivered form: Brazil's two cluster trials of PROERD (30 schools, 4,030 students) found no prevention effect, more continued binge drinking among 7th graders who already binged (Sanchez 2021), and higher intention to smoke (OR 1.93) and acceptance of marijuana (OR 1.62) (Valente 2021). US evaluations of the refined version are weak designs that measure mediators or lose most of the sample (Day 2017; Hansen 2023).

Sponsor (who paid)

  • Los Angeles Police Department State local government, co-founder (1983)
  • Los Angeles Unified School District State local government, co-founder (1983)
  • D.A.R.E. America NGO, national organization; curriculum owner

Credits (who made it)

Not recorded yet.

Related campaigns

Sources

  1. Ennett ST et al. How effective is drug abuse resistance education? A meta-analysis of Project DARE outcome evaluations. Am J Public Health 1994;84(9):1394-401 evaluation · 1994 · DOI 10.2105/ajph.84.9.1394 · PMID 8092361
  2. West SL, O'Neal KK. Project D.A.R.E. outcome effectiveness revisited. Am J Public Health 2004;94(6):1027-9 evaluation · 2004 · DOI 10.2105/ajph.94.6.1027 · PMID 15249310
  3. Clayton RR, Cattarello AM, Johnstone BM. The effectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (project DARE): 5-year follow-up results. Prev Med 1996;25(3):307-18 evaluation · 1996 · DOI 10.1006/pmed.1996.0061 · PMID 8781009
  4. Lynam DR et al. Project DARE: no effects at 10-year follow-up. J Consult Clin Psychol 1999;67(4):590-3 evaluation · 1999 · DOI 10.1037//0022-006x.67.4.590 · PMID 10450631
  5. Sloboda Z et al. The Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention Study: a randomized field trial of a universal substance abuse prevention program. Drug Alcohol Depend 2009;102(1-3):1-10 evaluation · 2009 · DOI 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2009.01.015 · PMID 19332365
  6. Day LE, Miller-Day M, Hecht ML, Fehmie D. Coming to the new D.A.R.E.: a preliminary test of the officer-taught elementary keepin' it REAL curriculum. Addict Behav 2017;74:67-73 evaluation · 2017 · DOI 10.1016/j.addbeh.2017.05.025 · PMID 28595059
  7. Hansen WB et al. D.A.R.E./keepin' it REAL elementary curriculum: substance use outcomes. PLoS One 2023;18(4):e0284457 evaluation · 2023 · DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0284457 · PMID 37115774
  8. Sanchez ZM et al. Effectiveness of a school-based substance use prevention program taught by police officers in Brazil: two cluster randomized controlled trials of the PROERD. Int J Drug Policy 2021;98:103413 evaluation · 2021 · DOI 10.1016/j.drugpo.2021.103413 · PMID 34481111
  9. Valente JY, Sanchez ZM. Short-term secondary effects of a school-based drug prevention program: cluster-randomized controlled trial of the Brazilian version of DARE's keepin' it REAL. Prev Sci 2021;23(1):10-23 evaluation · 2021 · DOI 10.1007/s11121-021-01277-w · PMID 34226985
  10. Valente JY et al. A systematic review of the effect of the school-based drug prevention program Keepin' it REAL: translated and implemented in Brazil by PROERD. Cien Saude Colet 2022;27(11):4175-89 evaluation · 2022 · DOI 10.1590/1413-812320222711.07162022 · PMID 36259838
  11. Caputi TL, McLellan AT. Critique of D.A.R.E.'s adoption of keepin' it REAL. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy 2017;24(1):49-57 (title not checked) reference · 2017 · DOI 10.1080/09687637.2016.1208731

Research notes

Created 2026-10-23 as a counterexample for docs/what-good-looks-like.md. Findings are paraphrased from PubMed abstracts; full texts not read; titles checked against PubMed 2026-10-23. Day 2017 is a quasi-experiment (943 students, 26 classrooms) measuring mediators only, and its co-author Michael Hecht is with REAL Prevention LLC, the curriculum's developer. Hansen 2023 kept 24-34% of its sample and used algorithmically generated virtual controls. Rosenbaum & Hanson 1998 (J Res Crime Delinq 35(4):381-412, not in PubMed) reported small increases in drug use among suburban students in a 6-year study; not added as a source until checked. The Caputi & McLellan citation comes from a search result, not PubMed. Tagline and the number of US districts and countries not verified; no credits (no agency involved). D.A.R.E. America's current reach claims are self-reported and not recorded here.

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