Did D.A.R.E. Actually Increase Drug Use?

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[@TodayIFoundOut]

Go to curiositystream.thld.co/brainfood_1022 and use code BRAINFOOD to save 25% off today, that’s only $14.99 a year. Thanks to Curiosity Stream for sponsoring today’s video.

[@fredred8371]

Video starts at 1:24

[@kc135rpilot]

WHAT EVER YOU DO! Please do not grab the dollars and jump off, I so much enjoy your videos. Please dont do that.

[@AnimeShinigami13]

Simon caught a scammer and reported them, pretending to be you.

[@FakeSchrodingersCat]

At the end you talk like there was no way Nancy Reagan could have known DARE didn't work but she lived until 2016 and never said a word against it.

[@PaigeWylderOwO]

Hi, can you please provide a transcript of the sources used to make this video? I'd like to learn more.

[@Darth_Cornpop]

Not once during my childhood did I ever encounter a man with a trench coat, mustache, sunglasses and a trilby hat in an alley wanting to give me weed. DARE lied to me. I feel cheated.

[@missmoxie9188]

I know right?

[@fangoram29]

I did in university but he was a friend of a friend. Also real big fan of the matrix so it was a leather one

[@lewallen2897]

I'm British and 23 but I know the advert your talking about and it's amazing

[@bluejedi723]

@@fangoram29 knew a guy like that in college. He was cool as shit and if I didn't want his weed that day, it was "MORE FORE ME MAN!"

[@MrTruehoustonian]

I know right all I got was some fat Mexican selling me some bunk thanks Uncle and D.A.R.E just meant Drugs Are Really Expensive

[@jmarx3943]

I had a DARE class in 5th grade. A year later, the officer who talked to us was arrested for drunk driving.

[@ScaerieTale]

My experience with DARE was basically a bunch of assemblies where adults lectured or occasionally yelled a lot (bad cop, basically). So like 600 kids herded into an auditorium with zero actual engagement with us. Most of us didn't pay attention. We were kids. We just cared that we got out of class for an hour. Well-meaning, just horribly implemented.

[@munkeefinkelbeen5395]

Once had a cop come into our room who I swear had several PTSD moments during his hour long speech, as he would randomly forget he was in a classroom, start screaming and throwing out obscenities like they were going out of style... like we were shifting between inmates and students in his mind. Spent the whole time feeling bad for him and hoping he got the therapy he so obviously needed

[@wookievr641]

100% agree to it being implemented poorly. Same model as abstinence messaging. DARE crap was shoved our throats all through school. Non of it worked. Schools where full of drugs. Ones that didnt use ended up using in collage. Very few didnt use pre college age.

[@kellypawspa]

@@munkeefinkelbeen5395 lol Oh my... Honestly that sounds funny now, but it would pretty f-ing terrifying for a room full of kids that had never seen anything like that before. Pentecostal church scared the crap out of me pretty bad as a kid.... So I can only imagine... Why In the hell did they send that guy to go humiliate himself and terrify a class full of kids? Horrible decision....

[@ssatva]

I remember a t-shirt going around that read the acronym as Drugs Are Really Expensive, and I think that was more importantly informative even if it was a druggie joke.

[@TriXJester]

It was legit just a scare tactic that never worked. Honestly most of the kids I went to school with didn't even know the existence of some drugs until DARE told us what they were. I had a very different experience to my peers cause my grandma used to take me with her to her Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and that did far more to dissuade me from drugs than the school program ever did. It's more effective to hear the stories from the people who actually experienced them than to listen to some vague authority figure telling you "Dont do this thing because it is bad." Like really, when has telling kids or teenagers to not do something ever actually worked?

[@maxdanielj]

It seems to me that exposing kids to NA would do a lot more good than having cops with no personal experience with drug use would be. At least then everything would be from personal experience and kids could see the end result of narcotics use

[@LothairApoclyane]

@@maxdanielj The logo itself associated with DARE seemed to me as a kid to be daring me to try drugs. - Because they wanted us to learn about drugs, but how could I really know if I didn't try it myself?

[@charlieclark9552]

What drug did your grandma use

[@NoTengoIdeaGuey]

Even still, that's maybe more effective than DARE, but I'm 100% positive the most effective method is a twofold effort of increasing funding for adolescent education and training programs alongside decriminalization and regulation of all drugs. In your example you're essentially replacing the random authority figuring saying "don't do drugs" with a random person who tells stories about how their own life was ruined saying "don't do drugs". Everything history has shown us has made it clear that telling kids "don't do drugs" and leaving all else the same doesn't work for shit.

[@kellypawspa]

Exactly... I raised my hand and asked if drugs are so "bad" then why do people do them? What's their appeal? They of course had no answer. Made me think they must be REALLY fun then. Lol The essence of the program that I took away from it, it seemed more like a way to get kids to snitch on their parents so they could take them and put them into the system.... Much more nefarious then anyone ever gave them credit for. Insure wish I still had that T-shirt though! Lol

[@RwingDsquad]

All DARE did for me was educate me about drugs and sparked curiosity that made me wonder why people did them to begin with. So I ended up trying quite a few of them.

[@michellemire8462]

The bots are wild in this comment section

[@grindnshineproductions]

​@@michellemire8462 are they well I agree with the bot then

[@docmike8601]

In my US high school, the student DARE president was the school drug dealer. The school and local PD essentially financed the parties he threw to sell drugs. He would sarcastically walk around the school in his "Drug Free" T-shirts.

[@Bjorn308]

That's hilarious.

[@comacollosasa6282]

Absolute legend

[@KattMurr]

Classic!!!

[@12pentaborane]

that student is now a congress man

[@maxdanielj]

Sounds normal to me as far as how things went with dare

[@ArcherSuh4721]

When I was a teenager back in the 90s, you could always find D.A.R.E. t-shirts in every thrift store in the area and they became a fashion staple for every pothead in my high school. This trend quickly ended because if a student was seen wearing one, they were suspected of drug use/dealing by the faculty. In the immortal words of Buck Murdock, "Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes."

[@myeyeswentdeaf6213]

Great comment, great quote. 👍

[@maxdanielj]

A school using dare shirts to spot druggies sounds crazy but was probably pretty common since that's usually what happened

[@AmsterdamHeavy]

I dont know about DARE, but I can tell you this: In 1978, in the fifth grade, Officer Friendly came to school to tell us about the evils of drugs. He gave us a comic book called "Users are Losers", and in the centerfold of that comic book was an index of every street drug you could think of, its effects and so on. It was the most valuable guide to drug use I had owned until the internet and Erowid came along ~20 years later.

[@DFSJR1203]

Where I went to school in New Jersey we also had visits by the police with the "Users are Losers" lectures. That's great in a school system that had a smoking lounge outside the cafeteria in High School. I guess smoking was OK back then, just no drugs.

[@matthewkruse5536]

We got the DARE rulers in the late 80s/early 90s. Same thing, had a list of drugs along with various street names. More drug info on that ruler than I've encountered the rest of my life combined. Very durable too, had that ruler around the house for years.

[@LRM12o8]

ah yes, shaming and mocking people who are desperate for a pain relief, that's gonna change their mind! 🙃 Just like saying "suicide is sin" has saved plenty a hopeless soul from making that mistake, right? ...right...? At least it's a good job they listed all the drugs and effects. I find those things very interesting, but once you heard a detailed description of what they do, do you really still need/want to try it yourself? I found that reading about it satisfied all the curiosity I might have had. :-)

[@jhsrt985]

Did they actually call him officer friendly? I've heard that fake name before but only in on tv

[@TheHorseshoePartyUK]

Part of The Law of Unintended Consequences, of which the War on Drugs is one of the most catastrophic examples ever. All it has achieved, is increased potency from real substances, cutting them with contaminates, often other substances, danger from 'analog' types flooding the market too, increased danger overall, funnelled often harmless addicts into the University of Crime to get Doctorates in Felonies, for private profits no less, and massive profits to OC who have a weird push - pull - love - hate relationship with terrorists. What a time to be alive! kzbin.info/www/bejne/jIq4Y2iXf9Waa9E ^ really, really good talk about the MeSo Cartels. There's practically no competition between them except a bit of turf wars and succession battles. The South American, National Crime Syndicate.

[@TrickstyrStudio]

In my personal experience, D.A.R.E. Introduced me to the concept of drugs. I had no idea drugs even existed until the D.A.R.E. program. That could probably be said for many other people as well. I am fairly certain that many of my drug using student colleagues over the years are in the same boat, the program introduced them to drugs, they wanted to be rebellious cause that's what kids and teens do. And boom, unintentional encouragement to do drugs. Also, the program made it seem like being offered drugs would be a common thing. And yet I have never been offered drugs, never actively seen people use drugs in or outside of school and only knew kids were on them if they talked about it after the fact or were acting as if they were under the influence. Drugs are also expensive, no one is going to offer you them at random. Maybe Weed but nothing else.

[@craigmergenthal9291]

The situations where the program told you drugs would be offered would never occur- it was always some shady-looking character in a trenchcoat in a dark alley going "PPSSST- hey kid...you want some (whatever)?!" and the "solutions" offered by the program seemed to be "scream as loud as you can while running away in fear". They never seemed to go over what to do if you're offered drugs by someone you know and give REALISTIC methods to say no while still saving social face, which is very important to kids and always will be. They always taught phrases that no kid would ever say, like "only LOSERS do drugs, I'm too COOL for DRUGS!" and walk away (which isn't even an option in a lot of social settings). It was all basically what some old person THOUGHT would work, but had no shot of actually working.

[@andrewgates8158]

Nancy worked for George HW Bush. They wanted kids using drugs.

[@kellypawspa]

The stupid name.... It's like they were DAREing us to try them....and in some cases they were the ones passing out the pot in school! (Unintentionally, of course, but WHAT DID THEY EXPECT?!)!

[@nobodyfamousX]

I've only had people come up and ask me for drugs. I guess I have that dealer look.

[@sventer198]

😂😂

[@flyleelee5351]

Yes. Because anytime you pound into someone's head to not do something, it makes them want to do it more

[@Shiro_Amada]

Psychological Reactance See also the "Barbra Strisand Effect"

[@wtconroe879]

They were also working under the presumption that substances like cannabis or psychedelics didn't actually have any medical value so there was that failure too.

[@LRM12o8]

*Especially* when that someone is a teenager!

[@shinnam]

Yep, that is why "abstinence only" sex ed has resulted in the high rate of pregnancy and abortions in the religious crowd. Taught in a rural mostly Catholic US school that had a special bus just to bring teenage mothers and their kids to school.

[@bl8danjil]

Yep, look at forced mask mandates and forced covid shots. It's happening again with vaping. Although teens will probably go back to weed just because it is easier to get.

[@christygaiser]

I remember finishing d.a.r.e., getting my tshirt and wearing it behind the 7-eleven drinking a 40 and getting stoned af. The late 80’s was wild af. I also remember them wanting us to narc on our parents. I knew if I did my mama would beat my ass as soon as she got bailed out. One kid in my class did snitch and I remember the side eye contact the rest of us gave eachother. That was his last day in that school with us. No idea what happened to him…

[@stratton6411]

DARE didn't work. I find it funny most people still don't know that you can get legal thc edibles in every state. The 2018 Farm Bill redefined how much thc can be in a legal product to be based on the total weight of the product and not total thc content. I get edibles with 200mg of thc even though I live in a state with conservative weed laws. I order it online from Recreational8 because they have lab tests for all their products and not all vendors do. This is the first step the federal government has taken to actually legalize it.

[@Aztesticals]

Dude that is delta 8 thc. Still a type of thc but it is a different drug. Thc is the base term for several drugs. The thc in traditional weed is delta 9 thc. The farm bill only prohibited delta 9 thc. So delta 8 and delta 10 thc just Involve moving a specific carbon bond to a different carbon in the ring. Delta 8 is half as strong and had 2x the tolerance but is more sedating. Delta 10 is like 2/3 delta 9 thc strength and is more stimulating. Then there is hhc which is hexahydrocadabinal which has 2 more water molecules than tetrahydrocadabinal. Then there is thc o which ads an acetyl group that makes it bind differently and makes in 3x stronger and more psychedelic. But those gummies will never contain delta 9 unless you live in a legal state and if they do please report them. By keeping Dea and stuff busy with things actually against the law they have less time to wory about these legal alternatives

[@stratton6411]

@@Aztesticals You are mostly correct. Yes, delta 8 and delta 10 are isomers of delta 9, but you will still absolutely find legal delta 9 edibles now. The reason is because a single gummy weighing 7 grams can contain 10mg of delta 9 THC (comparable dose to dispensary edibles) and that gummy is still federally compliant because it contains less than 0.3% d9thc BY DRY WEIGHT. Yes, there are D8 and d10 products too, but you can also get legit d9 ones thru the same loophole

[@CDCI3]

@@Aztesticals two more hydrogen atoms, not water molecules.

[@Aztesticals]

@@CDCI3 you are correct. Apologies, my main area of study is the biological effects and mechanics of action for pharmaceutical compounds. My organic chemistry nomenclature has gotten a fair bit rusty. I had mistaken the hydro for hydrate.

[@Aztesticals]

@@stratton6411 oh I see. I would think that that would make the act of using thc a tad tedious. My stomach would not like that much gummy as I need about 50mg of thc

[@carowright6626]

In both DARE and my high school “Health education“ classes, it was always the same thing: if you do drugs, you will overdose, and you will die. If you have sex, you will get aids, and you will die. If you drink alcohol, you will get in a car crash, and you will die. I remember taking all this in and then shrugging my shoulders and thinking: “well, I guess I’m going to die.” These courses were so incredibly useless. It would be so much more socially beneficial to give kids more practical classes about car maintenance or tax filing-skills and knowledge they will actually require! When I think about all of the wasted hours spent learning about the side effects of cocaine, it makes me want to scream.

[@LRM12o8]

education on drugs and sex is important, but it should be done properly. Unlike kids, teenagers know that parents and teachers are often times hysteric and overly sceptic about the things (they think) their kids do, but they can't tell when their parents/teachers are actually right. They just know they're constantly distrusted and thus tend to disregard and resent any and all warnings from parents and teachers. Instead of spitting out generalized and often exaggerated warnings, they should just inform teenagers about these topics in a neutral and factual way and give them the knowledge to make their own informed decisions. Like: _"If you have sex, you can contract nasty STDs. here's how to prevent them, here's how to detect them and what to do when you have them."_ _"If you're dating, you can end up with a toxic/abusive partner. Here are some typical red flags and manipulative dating tactics, here's how to defend yourself against them and here's where to get help"_ _"If you do drugs, you can get addicted. Here are some risk factors that make addiction very likely, here's why drugs are not a way out of these issues and here's where to get the help you actually need"_ Whoever thinks that telling teenagers "don't do that, cause it's bad" did anything positive is seriously detached from reality.

[@joeennis2571]

i hear you and I think the old adage rings true , you can not put an old head on young shoulders

[@TH-hy9kr]

​@@LRM12o8 spot on. 👏

[@TH-hy9kr]

my high school thought it was a great idea to have a woman who had HIV come and scream at us that we were too young and stupid to have sex...didn't work well

[@LRM12o8]

@@TH-hy9kr wow, that only served to humiliate that poor woman. Bet she didn't do that completely voluntarily!

[@bradeurich5183]

I went through DARE in the late 80's/early 90's, they told us if you smoke pot you'll become a useless druggie. So we/our friends smoked pot, and still functioned. The logical conclusion for a teenager is that they were lying about all the other drugs too. I still remember there was a footnote at the bottom of all our DARE worksheets with the phrase "AMERICA! DRUG FREE BY 2000!" lol

[@stigrabbid589]

they were technically telling the truth if you/your friends tried harder drugs and got hooked on them after using weed. Weed is not a gateway drug under normal circumstances though. Is weed completely ok? No. But neither are tobacco or alcohol.

[@jonathanzimmer8143]

We were just getting warmed up....

[@qlipoth]

Same. I never got into anything hard drugs and don't even drink now, but I distinctly remember a moment of "Since they lied about this, why should I believe anything else they said?"

[@maxdanielj]

Pot as a gateway drug has been a popular thing since at least the 60s as evidenced by how many times that was said in the old Dragnet series

[@DarkfoaxProductions]

I to agree I was in the dare program and even won the dare essay contest we had ti be featured In the book the next year. Come to find out my mom was having an affair with the officer and that's why I won but I also went stoned everyday to school amd came back from lunch stoned and me and my boy was the only ones to get commended on all our tax tests that year

[@marstrull]

I’m in recovery and after talking to many addicts who had the dare program it made almost all of them more interested in drugs or wanting to try them

[@kamcorder3585]

Best of luck on your journey of healing

[@marstrull]

@@SimuLord thanks you to! It’s awesome you have 26 years I have 3 years

[@rosekemp4671]

Congratulations on the recovery,! We both in the same boat

[@kalifogg6610]

A sis in law found DARE so ineffective that she thanked the person doing the class for TEACHING them how to safely take drugs. She’s never done drugs in her life and doesn’t plan to.

[@BaronVonQuiply]

See, the thing about D.A.R.E. .. The cannabis samples they had in the glass case were brown brickweed. Nothing at all like what I grow. If only ole Nancy could see my legal garden 🙂 Just Say Grow To Nugs.

[@johnharrington6958]

yeah cause they took all the good weed home to smoke 😂

[@bennett420316]

I went to catholic school and during our dare program the cop passed around a bag of coke and weed. Disaster struck when the weed bag disappeared and they didn't search the 150 kids well enough to find it! Lol they never came back to our school after that incident 😅

[@nickpalazzi2121]

That's an episode of South Park

[@briancrawford8751]

@@nickpalazzi2121 Yeah, I've heard that same bullshit story plenty of times. They're not going to pass actual drugs around, and if they actually did, I'm pretty sure they'd find them somehow.

[@Chris.Pontius]

If you gonna steal something you better steal that cocaine.

[@nickpalazzi2121]

@@Chris.Pontius I'd be more apt to take the blow now but you gotta remember these were catholic high school kids. Coke is more of an adult drug most people try after they get out of school... at least for me anyway.

[@bentramer682]

That has to be borderline child neglect or something. That's legitimately like something out of a movie.

[@gungriffen]

It didn't for me but I think it was reversed. Everyone around were drug addicts and DARE basically made me understand what I was seeing. I think for the middle class who never saw a barking junkie it was a gateway into something different. Later on in High School I use to tell all my friends who loved to "experiment" that they should come down to where I live so they can see what it's like when the party is over.

[@spritemon98]

That would be a good learning experience to them

[@FeedMeSalt]

Grown functional adults never have the party end. You don't understand how many people use cocaine and such. Literally the majority of upper class amarica. Other things like shrooms and weed don't ruin anyone. Harder shit like amphetamines Molly or pills are also used by 4 out of 10 people you work with everyday. Fact is, drugs especially in the US are culture. Myself i tried plenty of shit in highschool, glad I did. If I had tried it as an adult with adult money i might have died. Today I just smoke alot of tobacco and a shit ton of weed. Mostly because my ADD meds are 200$ a month while weed is 65$ 130 on a bad month.

[@CDRaff]

To think that someone needs to be "barking" to be a junkie shows me how little you really learned via DARE.

[@SEAZNDragon]

I took a narcotics course by a recently retired detective from Dallas a couple years ago. He recounted one of his last cases was a heroin based drug called "cheese" and there were several cases of middle schoolers overdosing on the stuff and dying. His unit was in a conundrum: they were not the age demographic for the drug and no way would the department would approve using kids as confidential informants. The solution? They went into the schools and showed the kids the negative effects of cheese including the deaths and use of the drug plummeted.

[@bl8danjil]

@@SEAZNDragon Pictures and videos usually work.

[@darthh3atran]

DARE vastly overestimated the number of people who’d be offering me drugs. Hell, I see more TV and radio advertisements trying to get me to try drugs than I do random people on the street

[@ajword81]

Oh shit...

[@darkstar4494]

That’s what conservatives imagine it’s like on “the streets” lol

[@shadw4701]

Yes, they and the war on drugs made use of hard drugs much more common and are to blame for the current drug epidemic. They don't even accurately educate people on drugs and lump all illegal drugs in the same category. There should be a new program similar to D.A.R.E but instead of teaching people to fear all drugs (and encouraging them to do them) they should go around educating people on psychedelics and how to safely use them. If people know of safer ways to get high there would be less people doing hard drugs

[@LRM12o8]

This along with destigmatizing mental health issues and addiction, plus education kids where to get help if they struggle with any of these things would go a much longer way to reduce the harm of drugs on society

[@danielscanlon5815]

We had to write an essay for a contest at the end of DARE in 5th grade and this girl Taylor and I won and had our pictures in the news paper.. A few years later we smoked weed together as high school freshmen. Just too bad I never got it for free like the DARE program lead me to believe would happen

[@joshgreen2164]

Most likely they said marijuana was as bad as heroine, id say this alone caused many heroin overdoses. Because after trying weed and finding it relatively harmless the question arises" how full of shit are they? Maybe heroin is similar?" Politicians are a joke.

[@sashanova719]

Anyone remember that pencil that said "it's not cool to do drugs" and everytime you sharpen it the words get shorter? "Not cool to do drugs" "Cool to do drugs" "Do drugs" "Drugs" Lol oh and those shirts, people in high school would cross out the "not" from "doing drugs is not cool"

[@kingkinslow]

Yes, Simon, yes it did. The statistics have shown drug use in younger generation, mine, began using drugs at a younger age and in mass numbers. Granted a lot is simply weed, a still schedule 1 drug which is insanity.

[@TheCheeseman1983]

In my entire life, nobody has ever solicited me to buy drugs. I’ve had friends share their weed with me at parties, but not until I was in my late twenties (how can high school/college kids afford that?), and most people I knew who sold drugs kept that fact pretty secret. I moved to a new state a few years back, and I honestly have no idea how I could acquire illicit drugs, even if I wanted to. Suffice to say, I never had much opportunity to actually practice anything taught in DARE.

[@sierrarhodd5318]

My Dad was a drug dealer when I was a kid and I never had knowledge of any of them until I started having DARE classes. Then I learned about each and their effects.

[@mybackhurts7020]

Yes! First we always felt like it was “dare to do drugs!” Then they would bring in these displays with all these different colored pills and stuff that looked like they tasted great and we figured they probably made you feel great yep I did drugs as soon as I could

[@Dolly-bc1dy]

Learned more about drugs in elementary and middle school from anti drug posters and assemblies than I ever did from my peers.

[@spritemon98]

Well it is a school lol. They're supposed to teach you

[@krystlepoulin6382]

I wonder if D.A.R.E. actually increased drug usage or if it's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon making us more aware of drug use than we were in previous decades.

[@spritemon98]

What's that phenomenon?

[@Bodhi1satva]

Problem with all sides of this is the obvious competitive nature of anything government does. Statistical data is commonly structured in such a way as to support whoever is doing the study in order to justify the expenditures and their hope to be the replacement programs that all compete for government money.

[@LRM12o8]

@@spritemon98 also called frequency illusion, a cognitive bias in which after noticing something for the first time, you notice it much more often than before, even though it didn't appear to you anymore frequently than before. For instance you learn that people who very recently smoked a joint often have reddish eyes and darkened eyelids and now you notice this in several people on the street and think that a lot more people have suddenly started smoking pot, simply because you never recognized it before.

[@briancrawford8751]

@@spritemon98 Apparently, it's frequency bias. She should've just said that.

[@seangannon6081]

Most of us wouldn’t have encountered drugs until much later in life if it wasn’t for DARE, and wouldn’t know much about them. Instead I went into 6th grade knowing that coke and heroin were really bad, but also how good they could feel and how to use them. Such a terrible idea

[@robertdinicola9225]

I started smoking weed in 1968. The summer before starting 7th grade. Never messed with more than that exept for a couple times and didnt like any other drugs.

[@thecofieldcollection3792]

Spoken like a true liberal enjoying hurting a conversative idea. Loser.

[@R463R]

I won the D.A.R.E. Spirit Award at the end of 5th Grade out of the entire Elementary School for the most knowledgeable for getting a perfect score on the little test they gave regarding drugs side effects, and such. I even got a D.A.R.E. Spirit Medal placed around my neck to display proudly back in 1995. I became so curious about substances effects on the brain, I remember how I could not wait to try these drugs once I was old enough to have the networking capability to acquire them, because if it’s illegal; it’s got to be good. I have had that mentality driven deep into my brain over 6 straight years of D.A.R.E. Education from Kindergarten through 5th Grade. It would be easier to tell you the drugs I have not tried than the ones I have done. I found my curiosity & skepticism to be proven correct in finding a single line of cocaine is not going to end up with me giving handies behind the dumpster by the local Eat n’ Park to get a bump to feed that need. I remember the first thought I had as the cocaine passed through the blood brain barrier was, “Is that it?!?” The curiosity was driven by the obscene amount of fear they tried to impose upon all of us. It really made it almost laughable. At this point in my life, I am 39, employed, live on my own, have a college degree, and do not really drink much let alone do drugs on a regular basis. I kind of feel my experimenting days are behind me. I have lost friends, and do consider myself one of the lucky ones. In my opinion, the problem with habitual drug use, as well as addiction is not the drugs themselves. The problem is why you take them in the first place. When the problems we have are addressed as the reasons why we take drugs by focusing on our mental wellbeing, as opposed to the outright scare tactics would be a much better route to take in terms of drug education. Take it from me, a winner of the D.A.R.E. Spirit Award. I can safely say D.A.R.E. did the complete opposite of what they had intended. It made me question everything I have ever been told by the authorities, and the government as a whole. I have begun to realize whatever they say is best, tell me not to do without a satisfactory explanation; I always dig deeper into the question spurred by childhood curiosity. Why not?

[@kimberlyweaver1285]

All I remember was a cop came in with clear plastic bags full of “mock” drugs. One of the bags had pot smelling tablets so we could take a deep breath. lol Thanks for teaching me how good weed smells! 👍🏻😂

[@Adam-qs5ir]

So...I went through DARE. I'm now a recovering addict. One thing I remember is this. We were told we would think things like our brain is in a bag being kicked around the room if we smoked pot. 7 years later, I smoked pot, and felt amazing. DARE failed

[@missedmurphy]

DARE tried to show you what it's like when the party is over. It didn't fail you. You failed yourself and now that party is over...

[@shamrock5725]

@@missedmurphy you didn't go to the right parties

[@missedmurphy]

@@shamrock5725 I grew up in the 90's-00's. I also grew up with two raging alcoholics as parents. I didn't have DARE around but we still had cops that would come in and essentially say the same things. Honestly, it didn't matter if DARE was around or not because the alcohol was still readily available and drugs were easy to get. I went to all the damn parties you could imagine. I've struggled with sobriety my entire life but not once did I look back and blame someone or something. At the end of the day it's me who's drinking myself to oblivion. You are responsible for your own actions. Blaming DARE is just an easy way out

[@LSSYLondon]

My father told me that the best music he ever heard was when he was high. I love his honesty.

[@EggplantHarmesan]

@@missedmurphy pot never makes me feel like that

[@DisgrunteledDachshund]

One of my favourite memories of drug Ed/DARE was after watching them go through all of the horrible side effects of different classes of drugs, stimulants make you stick thin and loose all your teeth, downers leave you sick and miserable, etc. Then the teacher got to hallucinogens and basically said that some people have gone crazy using LSD then quickly moved on. Realizing that even the drug Ed teacher couldn't find a danger to them made me question how bad they really are

[@SterbiusMcGurbius]

Our D.A.R.E. program told us how to make meth in vivid detail to try to freak us out. One guy wrote it down and 10 year later he's in prison for selling meth.

[@Melissa0774]

I did the DARE program in 5th grade. The problem I had with it was that it ended after 5th grade, which was way to young. We had a "graduation ceremony" at the end, where we all got completion certificates saying that we wouldn't do drugs. This was in 1997. It was ridiculous. At that age most kids are not interested in drugs yet. Of course, a lot of the kids who got those stupid certificates ended up abusing drugs and even becoming addicts later. Later on in high school, I wrote an editorial for the school newspaper about how dumb I thought the DARE program was because they were targeting the kids way to young. The school nurse told me she agreed and liked my article. I don't think the idea of the program was bad; I just think it would've worked a hell of a lot better if it was in high schools and not elementary schools. I my article I said that doing DARE for 5th graders was like having a sex education class for kindergarteners. I mean how may 10 year olds have already been in a situation where they had the opportunity to do drugs or even did it yet?

[@LRM12o8]

This, plus the fact that telling a teenager not to do something "because it's bad" at the very most makes them wanna do it even more (especially when it's something that's normalized for adult to do, like sex and legal drugs). And frankly, it's no goddamn surprise, given the insane amount of hysteria and negative prejudice many parents, teachers and most of media show towards teenagers. Thinking back at my teenage (I was born in 97^^), I felt like the whole world was just against me and my peers for no good reason and it still seems like that for the teenagers of today. When the adults see literally everything you do as bad and harmful and dangerous, of course you're not gonna listen on that one time they're actually right. These education programs should focus on giving teens the knowledge to make their own informed decision and where to get help when they need it, rather than demonizing that stuff outright. Teenagers might not be the best at making good decisions, but they're certainly better at it, then they are at following orders or heeding warnings!

[@bikecaptain8015]

Encouraging kids to have their parents incarcerated and themselves remanded to foster care for something they don't understand and are underprepared to evaluate or see the future consequences of? Yeah, actually. Pretty crappy and counterproductive I find it easy to suggest. I promise there was at least one foster kid, who, while wiping an unspeakable mess from their lips, thought, "In retrospect, mom smoking 3 midnight joints a week wasn't the abuse I was promised it was. Shouldn't have trusted the police. If I ever get out of this, never again."

[@robocook01]

Great points! The sad part of your post is that "they" are now trying to teach kindegartners about the lgbt community and transgenderism with drag queens. Talk about screwing a kid up early. Sad and confusing times we're living in..😔. Stay sane.

[@bikecaptain8015]

@@robocook01 Key difference? In one case it's, "Hey, kid! Your parents didn't do what they were told. You know that means they're evil and don't love you, right? Don't think about it too hard, just help me tear your family asunder." and in the other it's, "Hey, kid! If this is something you or a family member is dealing with? I want to promise you you're not as evil as some people will try to make you believe. Stay strong." One of these things is not like the other...

[@EldyPlaysMinecraft]

​@@robocook01 I take it that you also believe that Biden drinks the blood of children?

[@gummyberryjoos1693]

They lied so much about marijuana and we knew it; many of us figured they were lying about all of it.

[@CynthiaPrice79]

DARE was so full of crap. You didn’t mention that they outright lied to kids about the dangers of specific drugs.

[@ImTheJoker4u]

DARE officer came to my school with a briefcase full of cool drugs. I couldn't wait to try them all!!😁 Side note - DARE turns your kids into narcs. I recently read a story where a kid turned his parents in for smoking weed. They went to jail, the kids to foster homes. I wonder what that kid thinks of DARE now🤔

[@Dunkskins]

We had the DARE program even in New Zealand, but they wouldn't tell us at all about the actual drugs, so it just made us curious well it did for me. Me :What do drugs do and what are they? DARE : DONT DO DRUGS Me : Didn't answer the question so now I wouldn't mind trying them haha

[@Kenjiro5775]

I fondly recall the D.A.R.E. assembly in my high school MC'd by two police officers. My buddy and I shared a joint and some Big Red gum about 15 minutes before the assembly. No one suspected a thing, leading me to discount the entire program as a mere folly. Today, I can buy ounces of decent flower for about 35 bucks, taxed. Yeah, they lost, we won.

[@TimSedai]

Ran into my elementary school dare officer when i was 17, drunk at a city independence day function and her only words were "you guys grow up so fast..." great day lol

[@TimSedai]

@John Stuart Mill 80s here I was one of dare's 1st Long term failures lol

[@chwhite6886]

@John Stuart Mill I went to school just a little before you, a school full of middle class white suburban kids and it was drug central. I had access to all sorts of street drugs and pharmaceuticals. Keep living in fantasy land, little dude

[@rivers3three]

I went through the dare program in the early 90's, which coincided with the boom in ritalin prescriptions for most of the "acting out" restless kids who were bored. All I remember is thinking, they're telling us drugs aren't a solution yet the first thing they do when confronted with a child they can't immediately stuff in a box is to suggest(quite strongly as they did with me) that they go on amphetamines. One of the very things they had been telling us would ruin our lives. They keep treating children like idiots and wonder why this shit doesn't work. Most kids are pretty astute observers.

[@ZippoX05]

It didn't stop me that's for sure

[@culturedivined]

we had D.A.R.E in the uk back when i was a kid (i think it come into my school in the late 90s or early 2000s a year or so before i went to high school if i remember correctly lol) and it failed miserably i was a drug addict for all of my late teens and adult life only got clean when i turned 29 i'm now 32 and still staying clean to this day.

[@heyjude1971]

Great job!!! 👍

[@Gamer.Instinct]

I’m still waiting for that generous stranger that was supposed to give me free, and high resale value, drugs 😢 Also waiting for that first puff of a joint I ever had to turn me into a hardcore heroin addict

[@npc1374]

In DARE a police officer made me wear glasses to represent what happens to the body when you smoke pot and they were tinted green.. when I asked about the green tint I was told smoking pot makes you see green..................

[@joshuagibson2520]

They came through my class with a glass covered suitcase full of various labeled drugs and paraphernalia. We all got very curious. Wasn't long and we were all partaking.

[@miroslavhoudek7085]

If you replace any occurrence of the word "conservatism" with "brain rot", the whole history (and present) starts immediately making sense.

[@brianwoodbridge88]

I remember dare presentations in elementary school. Dare is well loved by parents. But I remember seeing police officers come in with a suitcase with drugs and paraphernalia. It made it seem cool and in my opinion, it increased the curiosity of kids who may have already been inclined to experiment with drugs. Plus i was never once offered drugs like it seemed every day I was gone get offered drugs by other kids at recess. Never happened

[@bob_._.]

So, if a child turns in their ex-hippy parents for smoking a joint because the D.A.R.E. Cop said they should, and the parents get sent to prison and the child ends up bouncing from one foster home to another and they totally everyone's life for real, does that make the kid more likely to start shooting horse?

[@Darkflowerchyld718]

D.A.R.E. was huge in my school. When I was in the 5th grade (97-98) we were tasked with writing an anti drug essay for them and the student with the best essay would win a prize and get an honorable mention in the year book. A classmate of mine won, she was the daughter of a heroin addict so who better than her to warn of the dangers of drugs. She grew up to be an addict too. Both her and her mom are now gone. That's all I think of when I look back on D.A.R.E.

[@allisonbergh4429]

I won that essay contest at my school! My prize was a trip to the local hydroplane races and a KISS album. 🤷🏼‍♀️ And I eventually got clean, since you ask.

[@KronicZombie]

I had never heard of drugs growing up until I was in DARE. The way they explained the drugs actually made them sound fun. Me as a kid: " so this Marijuana stuff will make me laugh, have fun and want munchies?? That sounds awesome"

[@ltkreg]

The "DARE" program was originated by Chief Gates of the LAPD who I actually knew. Once the program was implemented by the bureaucrats it was very different than the one he intended. He saw this, but despite his attempts to right the ship, there was too much governmental inertia too get it pointed back in the right direction. 🙂

[@bl8danjil]

Yeah, that sounds about right for the government.

[@daveogarf]

Chief Daryl Gates was a Nazi...

[@ltkreg]

@@daveogarf No he wasn't. There were some really dirty city politics going on back then and some of the City Fathers threw him under a bus to save themselves.

[@AnthonyMackONE]

D.A.R.E. helped me with identifying the drugs I’d be taking later in life…

[@robertbeaman5761]

They dared us and we took that dare

[@ShockedCaucasian]

I got 1st place on my Dare Final essay, aaaand then turned into a massive recreational user of all sorts of random things. ahh, the memories of innocence lmao.

[@somerandominternetdweller]

I remember D.A.R.E in my schools, growing up in elementary school. They always depicted the “drug users” as like the cool kids. But at the same time it’s opening the kids mind to things they would’ve never thought about or putting kids in a situation that may be put in a kids in situations a kid is not typically geared to think through.

[@michellelaroche2189]

True... if they had showed us pictures of what krockadil does to your body, that would be enough to scare people away rather than comics of what the cool kids are doing...

[@somerandominternetdweller]

@@michellelaroche2189 I think some of my teachers did a better job of explaining the bad things drugs did to you, especially when compared to D.A.R.E. I could imagine if the newer and synthetic drugs was around when I was a kid, it would scare the crap outta people.

[@amaccama3267]

Word from the wise. Never ever admit to previously having used drugs (min 10 years ago) in a work place. They'll only assume you still are and use it against you. Happened to me only recently. No matter how many test's you pass. They'll still assume the worst of you.

[@AnimeShinigami13]

Simon I'm glad that your video on dare covered the role that emotional pain plays in addiction. That's part of why I volunteer at the community garden and consider it important to make the front beds so colorful. I want to raise community morale. I also try to get people to stop and have a look at the things I'm working on if they have the time because I want people to be encouraged, inspired, and emotionally strengthened by the work I do. And it stands out. People in the neighborhood know me as "the plant lady" and compliment me on the Community center garden all the time, and a lot of them are in a local rehabilitation home just a few blocks away for men with drug problems. This year I made a three sisters style bed with a type of buckwheat at one end for a pollinator food crop. It was called "Takane Ruby" I just hope all the rain doesn't make the seeds rot. I need those!

[@ElectricalInsanity]

Thank you for doing what you can to make the world a better place 😄

[@AnimeShinigami13]

@@ElectricalInsanity you can garden too you know. mustard greens are a very fast vegetable to grow and very economical in pots. the seeds are easy to collect and can be used to make the condiment or planted for next year. mustard greens can be used like spinach but come in a variety of colors and shapes. My favorite is purple mizuna, with very feathery purple leaves.

[@jevinday]

In 6th grade the 2 people who wrote the best anti drug essay got to share it at the DARE assembly. I didn't win... that's definitely why I became an addict. Hahaha

[@TheNoodlyAppendage]

14:30 My child is grown, but I still have no problem paying for things like schools, libraries, free education school lunches etc. Because I am an adult and I enjoy living in a society where people at least have the chance to not be stupid, even if most of them refuse to take full advantage of that opportunity.

[@Shiro_Amada]

Well "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink".

[@maxpayne2574]

My father and older brother believed REAL MEN don't have emotions. I did have emotions and was put on strong downers, by a Dr., as a kid. As a teen I started smoking pot heavy to numb my emotions. In the U.S. 1/3 of people do not want to live in a modern society they want to go back to the "perfect past".

[@starchitin]

I went through the DARE program when I was in 5th grade.... I remember the DARE officer bringing in a suitcase with example of all the different illegal drugs mounted in it. I remember thinking at the time that was stupid as hell, cause we now knew what to look for if we wanted to get high. Whether DARE made it worse or not is up for debate, but it def did nothing to reduce drug use... pot and acid were all over the place when we got to high school and was openly discussed whenever teachers weren't around.

[@cyanmage1]

I'm still waiting for some guy in a trench coat to try to hand me free drugs, its been nearly 30 years I feel like I was lied to as a kid lol

[@paranoiawilldestroyya3238]

9:15: When I was in my forties, I tore my rotator cuff. Due to circumstances, it was undesirable to seek medical treatment beyond OTC painkillers. Some of my co-workers asked how I could continue to work with my shoulder hurting. I told them, "When you're my age, something hurts all of the time. You get used to it."

[@cognisent_]

DARE was where I learned about drugs way before the Internet was a thing and the place where I first became interested in psychonautics.

[@sailormoonfan224]

They always gave out the best loot, though. Every time I was off for a third or half of a school day for their events, they constantly gave out free stuff. Stickers, pens, pencils, crayons, markers ,pins, coloring books, keychains, notebooks, folders, drawstring bags, various small rubber trinkets (sometimes toys, other times stuff that counts as fidgets nowadays), and shirts. I’m sure I didn’t list everything, but I was constantly in the gym or auditorium from elementary to high school. Hell, I came across a D.A.R.E table in college on several different occasions. You never wanted to pass up the free stuff that they give out, they always had so much of it.

[@kacheek9101]

This! I went through D.A.R.E. in fourth or fifth grade and remember nothing except a couple slogans and how much fun I had at those assemblies

[@cotati76]

I went to high school between 90-94 and when they told us about psychedelics everybody I knew were like “we have to try those” and living in the Bay Area made it very easy to get them as Haight St was a short drive away and awash in LSD. Ahh the good old days.

[@courtneyrichards3895]

I went through DARE in elementary school but ours was VERY different from others. It was basically a week long dangers of alcohol course done by the one woman police officer in the area. No mention of anything else, nothing was brought in for us to see, just alcohol bad.

[@df7242]

Dare shirts just became the cool shirts for a stoner to wear.

[@joeyr7294]

15 bucks little man, put that shit in my hand...if the money doesn't show then you owe me, owe me, owe!

[@allisonbergh4429]

“Who smokes the blunts? We smokes the blunts!”

[@joeyr7294]

@@allisonbergh4429 😂 🍻💯

[@firefighter1c57]

Synopsis, the poor abuse drugs because they are in pain Me: Amy Winehouse, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, John Belushi, Marylin Monroe, Dwight Gooden...

[@keeperofnecronomicon]

Back in college(decade ago or more) I took a class on Public Relations in Business. We had a two part paper assigned, we had to write about a successful public relations campaign and failed public relationship campaign. For the first part I wrote about the DARE program and how it was a failure in its mission to keep kids off drugs For the second part I wrote about the DARE program and how it was a public relations success in convincing people to keep giving them money.

[@motorway2roswell]

I won a DARE essay contest in middle school. I got a DARE jacket with my name on it, and a DARE teddy bear. Still ended up doing drugs a few years later though 🤣

[@allisonbergh4429]

Me too - I got a KISS album and a trip to the hydroplane races. And also spent several years using.

[@nicholashoar8224]

A few years back I was informed that DARE was no longer taught in Canada, and upon talking with old classmates, we came to the conclusion that all dare taught us was what types of drugs were out there. That knowledge was used by some students to get a different type of high on the weekends. And everyone else continued to smoke and drink if they had been doing it before.

[@captainspaulding5963]

Funny that DARE started in California, because when I was in elementary in Southern California in the late 80's we had the SANE PROGRAM (Substance Abuse Narcotics Education)

[@rogerszmodis]

Drugs decisively won the war on drugs and dare was a big part of that. I did all the drugs they told me not to do in dare while wearing the shirt at some point.

[@jamesslick4790]

Sometimes giving kids more information WILL have the opposite effect from the one desired. Personal anecdote: When I was 6, After "Trick or Treating" my mother dutifully checked my "haul" for tampering. (And this was 1968, BEFORE the tampering hype/myth of the 70s, But it WAS still the "psychedelic" era.) She didn't want me to be drugged. I asked her what she meant. Instead of saying I could be poisoned or something else vague, She straight up said: "You could end up seeing things that aren't really there .😳 Now as a 60 year old man, that's frightening. 😲But to my 6 year old self, that sounded the best thing ever! 🥳🤪Better than TV or Movies!

[@greaseman01]

Yes it did

[@Aarkwrite]

I always thought Dare was such a weird name for an anti drug use program. I also always forget what the acronym means so that probably has a lot to do with it. PS I didn’t grow up with Dare so that’s also another reason it seems so weird.

[@FeedMeSalt]

Dare absolutely got my middle school hooked on drugs. I didn't even know how too smoke weed until they showed me. That same month I decided too try it. Glad I did :)

[@jennh2096]

I grew up in the 90s and today I found out what DARE actually stands for. Back then I was too busy smoking weed and using a sharpie to make my "pledge to be drug free" ribbons say "pledge to be A drug freeK" 🤣 Needless to say, the program did not work. I just eventually grew up, lost interest in being high, and went to college cause being a career crackhead just didn't sound appealing

[@greaseman01]

They just tell you drugs are bad not that they feel amazing they just say don't do it. They don't tell the truth that you'll like them so much you'll wanna hoover up blow till you've lost everything and everyone in your life

[@producerevan88]

I knew multiple drug dealers with D.A.R.E. tags on their cars 🤦🏻‍♂️ the whole program was a joke by the time I saw it as a kid.

[@RyanCrochets]

it taught me which ones were fun AND where to get them 💀 i went into that program knowing nothing that would get me into drugs

[@efxnoise]

I had taken the dare course in 7-8th grade. Recently, I saw tables setup all around Los Angeles with the D.A.R.E. banner and 2 people ready to tell you all about the "New DARE" program right before asking you for money. I haven't seen or heard anything more from that group.

[@bobbybucklew7898]

I remember the dare program. I can tell you it worked for me but not many other students in my class whom I now find in the news for drug arrests.

[@bl8danjil]

lol, who have thought that possession or selling those drugs would get themselves arrested. /sarcasm

[@hoganmchugh]

DARE: Drugs Are Really Excellent. Even in elementary school we came up with that. Loved watching the 80s era videos about them, so absurd, almost more entertaining than the fat Albert videos

[@KrisRyanStallard]

I don't remember anything we were taught in DARE, but I do remember feeling special when our cop had small duplicates of his badge made for my class. He was genuinely a nice man who cared, even if DARE was pointless. Also, I was a DARE true believer when I was a kid and went on to develop one hell of a meth addiction as an adult. Just thought I'd throw that out there. 🤷

[@jacquelynsmith2351]

Schools didn't care about being drug-free in the 90s, DARE or no. In 7th grade, I tried getting my friend to stop taking pills she'd stolen from her mom, but she wouldn't listen, so I tried asking the school for help. They blew me off. Then my friend found out they weren't opioids and stopped on her own.

[@jameswoodard8414]

I was a young teen in the late sixties when they started this whole drug craze and we didn't know anything about drugs until every other commercial on TV talked about it and every teacher in every class showed us what they were. They are responsible for the drugs and our knowledge of them.!

[@Wolfie1262]

I had three friends go through the DARE program in the 80s…all three ended up on worse drugs than any other kids I knew. So I always figured DARE was a joke. More like DARE to be stupid

[@JamesFromTexas]

All DARE did was make me want to try drugs. Same with that whole egg in a skillet, "This is you brain on drugs," thing. Use and experimentation is one thing. Did plenty of that. Abuse and addiction is a whole different ballgame. I tried a cornucopia of drugs and usually just for recreational use. It was doctor prescribed opioids that got me addicted. In the doctors' defense, what else would you do for a soldier who got blown up in Iraq though?

[@nijiru4448]

From Canada, and I always thought DARE stood for *Drugs Are Really Excellent*, given their focus on standing against peer pressure as everyone, from friends to family and strangers, was going to offer me drugs. If everyone else was doing them they must be **AWESOME**. In truth, I grew up in a household with a recovering alcoholic and never developed an interest in trying harder drugs or drinking to excess.

[@DJGive1]

I was in fifth grade the first year dare came out. It was great it taught us all about drugs we couldn't even get yet... Placed a bunch of people in a class or niche... Taught us what drugs we might want to try and what drugs would be profitable to sell.... Thanks D.A.R.E. Drugs are really expensive

[@dougmoore6612]

I was a D.A.R.E. kid. It was highly effective in helping me to choose which drugs were worth taking vs. which ones really should be avoided. Without DARE, I too could have become a meth head! DARE helped me to just say yes… to certain drugs! 😂😂😂