Excerpt from
DRUG PREVENTION PLACEBO
How DARE wastes time, money, and police
"In other instances, DARE supporters have lashed out against those who fault the program. After a 1993 story questioning the effectiveness of DARE appeared in USA Today, reporter Dennis Cauchon received letters from classrooms in different parts of the country, all addressed to "Dear DARE-basher," and all using near-identical language.
When a major television network planned a story on the program, DARE America cooperated until it became apparent that the story wasn't going to be a puff piece. "They worked very hard to get our story suppressed," the producer says. After filming a segment about one prominent anti-DARE activist, the producer remembers an angry confrontation with Silverman, who asked why they were "talking to a pro-marijuana supporter."
To tell DARE supporters that you have spoken with program critics often invokes astonishment, like telling Baptists you've been to hell and chatted with Old Nick himself. This us-against-them viewpoint is clearly stated in a November 1994 press release announcing the Substance Abuse Prevention and Law Enforcement Community Partnership Conference. Titled "Pro-Drug Groups Behind Attack on Prevention Programs," the release damns as advocates of drug legalization any who criticize DARE.
"Our detractors like to characterize DARE as an 'Orwellian reality' or 'Big Brother' at work," DARE America Executive Director Glenn Levant is quoted as saying. "These bush-league tactics are transparent for what they are: attempts to support various individual personal agendas at the expense of our children."
But with all that has been written about DARE, few critics have actually been inside a DARE classroom..."
Full text
http://reason.com/9503/fe.DARE.text.shtml(also archived at
http://fornits.com/anonanon/peaars.cgi )
Man! Doesn't this sound familiar???
When we are pleading with foreign governments to stop the flow of cocaine, it is the height of hypocrisy for the US to export tobacco. Years from now, our nation will look back on this application of free trade policy and find it scandalous.
1989 testimony before the US Trade Representative,September 1989
--Surgeon General, Everett Koop