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School Based Prevention Programs

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School Based Prevention Programs
Do school based prevention programs actually work? Intro: Many people claim that school based drug and alcohol prevention programs do not work and are just a waste of money. (Hanson, 2002) What people want to know is how much do we spend on these programs? What are the programs actually trying to prevent? And does the program work? It is questions like these that leave people so confused about the decisions they make regarding the program like, determining if the program is benefiting their child or wasting school time that could be used to teach something more useful.
DARE:
A great deal of money is spent to support the DARE program. (Thombs, 2001) The government gives about two billion dollars a year to fund DARE. State, local, and private funding is being put towards these programs also, for a total cost of about 8 billion dollars per year for a program that may not even work. (Rowe, 1998) The project ALERT prevention program costs about one hundred fifty dollars per student. (project alert, 2003).
The program that people claim doesn’t work the most is the DARE program. (Hanson, 2009) DARE stands for drug abuse resistance education. The program is designed with the intentions of of reducing the likelihood of youth using drugs. (Lucas, 2008) It is a program in which police officers, from local police stations, go to classrooms ranging from kindergarten to fifth grade. They are supposed to teach students life skills they need in order to avoid involvement with drugs and alcohol. The program originated in 1983 by the Los Angeles police department. (What is, 1996) The program was claimed to be so successful that it is now used in eighty percent of the United States school districts. (Hanson, 2002) Research was done to see how much the program worked or effected students and studies consistently show that DARE, when it comes to reducing the use of alcohol and drugs, is very ineffective. (Hanson, 2002) Sometimes the program showed
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