Free Republic

Date/Time: 9/16/03 7:55:42 AM Bulletin Text: The Dare County Control Group has issued a mandatory evacuation for Dare County beginning at 12:00 p.m. today (Tuesday, September 16, 2003). Residents and visitors on Hatteras Island are urged to make final preparations and leave the area prior to noon, if possible, since Highway 12 is prone to flooding and provides the only access south of Oregon Inlet. The northeast quadrant of Hurricane Isabel will cause damage along the oceanfront as the hurricane moves closer to shore. Ocean overwash is expected as early as today, particularly along the southern beaches. Soundside flooding will...

The Truth about D.A.R.E. by Paul Armentano [March 31, 2003] If popularity was the sole measure of success then D.A.R.E., the "Drug Abuse Resistance Education" curriculum that is now taught in 80 percent of school districts nationwide, would be triumphant. However, if one is to gauge success by actual results, then America's most pervasive and expensive youth drug education program is (and always has been) a gigantic and incontrovertible flop. So says the General Accounting Office (GAO) in a scathing new report that finds the politically popular program has had "no statistically significant long-term effect on preventing youth illicit drug...

As the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program moves out of its teenage years and turns 20, it's putting on a new face. In response to a series of negative evaluations during the mid-1990s, the popular program that started in Los Angeles in 1983 went to work to reinvent itself. Recently, findings from the new DARE were released. In this program, seventh-graders learn that using drugs is socially inappropriate, not the norm, and dangerous. They are then taught how to "just say no." According to researchers, preliminary evaluations are "promising." I wish, as the mother of a teenager, I could...

MARIETTA — Many police departments across the nation are discontinuing DARE anti-drug programs because of questions about the program’s effectiveness, but the City of Marietta program is here to stay. Marietta Police Chief Bobby Moody, a member of Drug Awareness Resistance Education’s National Advisory Board, discounts the critics who argue the program does little to lower drug use by students. “DARE is important here in Marietta, because there’s a cycle that needs to be broken,” Moody said Thursday. “Now you see second and third generations of families beaten down by drugs. My goal, and the police department’s goal, is to...

Findings of a study recently published by the prestigious Journal of the National Medical Association demonstrates that the D.A.R.E. curriculum is highly effective in prevention of smoking among elementary school-aged children. Smoking is the single most preventable cause of death. Specifically, the study found that students that completed the D.A.R.E. program were five times less likely to start smoking compared to youngsters who did not participate in D.A.R.E. This evaluation of 5th and 6th graders in Nashville, Tennessee was conducted by researchers at the Meharry School of Medicine. Researchers further found a direct correlation between knowledge regarding the risks of...

Willoughby took group's $80,000, warrant alleges Thursday, July 11, 2002 BY PETE SHELLEM Of The Patriot-News The state attorney general's office has charged the former head of Pennsylvania's D.A.R.E. program with stealing more than $80,000 from the anti-drug program and using his position to obtain free booze, food and rooms worth $32,000 from an area hotel. Agents have been scouring Harrisburg bars and contacting Roy A. Willoughby's family members and friends since issuing an arrest warrant Monday, but have been unable to find him. The money was stolen from grants to the Pennsylvania D.A.R.E. Officers Association that Willoughby helped procure...

DARE lacks oversightProgram's cost soars past $1 billion with little accounting Sunday, June 30, 2002 Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief Even as concern has grown about the effectiveness of America's most popular anti-drug program, few questions are being asked about how much Drug Abuse Resistance Education is costing taxpayers. Or who is accountable for the spending. Neither the government officials who hand out the money nor DARE executives themselves can put a definitive price tag on it, but estimates from several independent experts range from $1 billion to more than $2 billion annually. And despite questions about whether DARE...

<p>Citing evidence that the Drug and Alcohol Resistance Education program is ineffective at altering youths’ behavior as they get older, Toledo police Chief Michael Navarre dropped DARE instruction in Toledo, Washington Local, and Catholic elementary schools.</p> <p>To take its place, he plans to develop a new anti-drug program in-house that will feature more direct interaction between police presenters and pupils.</p>