Children in Hanford love DARE. For them, it's time for ice cream at Superior Dairy, hot dogs at The Plunge, games at the Teen Center -- and education about drugs.

Educators swear by the program, saying it teaches kids the dangers of drugs.

Parents help raise funds for it, while local businesses donate time and money.

Police officers say it's by far the best-known tool to steer kids away from drugs and claim success because those who go through it have a better attitude toward law enforcement.

In Hanford, the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program has become a darling in the communitywide war on drugs.

But the question is, after 25 years with billions of dollars in tax dollars and countless officer hours spent, is the nation's largest drug education program really working?

Despite countless testimonials and success stories, there was no concrete scientific evidence that DARE actually keeps kids off drugs, at least until this summer.

Results of a nationwide evaluation on the new and improved DARE curriculum released recently by the University of Akron indicates the program is living up to expectations.

Critics, however, say their evidece suggest otherwise.

The answer to the question remains ever more elusive, when federal and statewide statistics indicate no dramatic change in illegal drug use trends among teenagers in recent years. Also, a majority of addicts still get their first taste of drugs before the age of 18.

Drug use prevalence in Kings County youth is similar to that of the state and the nation.

Hanford has funded the program for 20 years, designating an officer full-time to the program and spending nearly $100,000 a year. Various contributions also come from schools.

Opinions on DARE vary from one professional to another.

Hanford DARE Officer Mark Dillon says he doesn't need a study to tell him how effective the program is, after witnessing positive responses from kids and parents for many years. Educators rally behind him.

Local mental health professionals acknowledge the value of school-based programs like DARE but say kids need much more than a one-time exposure to drug education.

The complex dynamics of addiction, they say, would require a long-term commitment of support for at-risk youth if effective drug prevention is to be achieved.

Critics say DARE, with its abstinence focus, is not only ineffective but even potentially harmful to youth by propagating a message incongruent to reality.

Facing criticisms from outside and within, DARE -- first introduced to Hanford schools in 1986 -- reinvented itself in 2001 with University of Akron social scientists' help. Hanford saw its DARE content change in 2003.

Meanwhile, the question continues to linger over the effectiveness of DARE and the merit of its recent makeover.

Dillon sees the program's "research-based" redesign and a university's involvement as a sign that formerly critical social scientists are now on DARE's side.

But some experts in youth education remain unimpressed.

They argue that the new program is still abstinence-based and that it was adopted nationwide with no real scientific proof of effectiveness. They also raise numerous technical issues associated with the new program and its evaluation model.

"Because it works," DARE America's new brochure grandly proclaims in bold face letters, promoting its new curriculum as interactive and emphatic of improving kids' decision-making skills.

Founded in 1983 by Los Angeles police and the school district, DARE has grown so rapidly that it is now used by 75 percent of local school districts nationwide and 54 other countries.

But a striking shift occurred in 2001, when the heads of DARE admitted their strategy had not been effective.

Then the program had its rebirth, as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation gave DARE a $13.7 million grant to bring its curriculum up to date and scientifically evaluate its usefulness. The old theme "Just Say No" was replaced by "Take Charge of Your Life," a theme indicative of the new University of Akron-developed curriculum that touts its more interactive contents.

In Hanford, more than 2,000 fifth-, sixth- and eighth-graders from 14 schools, both public and private, currently participate in the new DARE program.

Dillon has taught drug prevention to kids for 16 years. Hanford's only DARE officer is a firm believer of the program.

"Drugs are a multi-faceted problem," Dillon said. "Education is just one of many pieces of the puzzle to fix the problem. Education is extremely important in this process."

The old program focused on hard facts and knowledge improvement, while the new program allows kids to learn problem-solving through classroom interactions. The buzz is good on the change, Dillon says.

"DARE works just for the simple reason that I have parents come up to me and tell me just how much dialogue at home is initiated by children who went through the program," Dillon said. "I've seen this program evolve from a good program to an outstanding program."

Children who had just gone through a two-week course on how to avoid drugs spoke positively about DARE.

"It was a very cool experience to learn all kinds of drugs and their effects. It was very educational," Macy Magana, a DARE graduate from St. Rose McCarthy School, said. "It scared me because it can happen to anybody in my family."

Donning a T-shirt with an anti-drug message, a group of sixth-graders from McCarthy School like Magana packed the Hanford Teen Center on May 8, playing foosball, air hockey and ping pong -- a little graduation treat.

Michael Rosa, another student, showed off a little about what he had learned: "I didn't know stuff like cigarettes have 200 known poisons in it, and 1,200 people die every day from smoking-related issues."

Witnessing such statements from students, Principal Jim Carpenter called DARE "another tool" young people can use in the face of life challenges.

"Raising kids is a partnership," Carpenter said. "Hanford has a drug problem, and we need to turn this around. And DARE offers that critical education."

Carpenter says Dillon has been a good role model for the kids.

"I don't think they look at him as a police officer but more as a friend," Carpenter said. "Kids are very interested. They have lots of questions. What better person is there to teach them than the expert?"

These anecdotal benefits of DARE and its popularity contrast with a sizable body of research that questions the program's effectiveness.

The surgeon general and the National Academy of Sciences issued reports in 2001 saying that DARE is largely ineffective. A 1994 U.S. Department of Justice-funded study by Research Triangle Institute concluded DARE had little impact and its effect was short-term at best. The California Legislative Analyst's Office as well as Dennis Rosenbaum, a University of Illinois-Chicago criminologist, found DARE graduates were more likely to smoke, drink and use drugs.

"To my knowledge, there's no single methodologically sound study that shows DARE prevents kids from using drugs," said Joel Brown, director of the Center for Educational Research and Development, a Berkeley-based nonprofit that researches and evaluates drug education programs.

Statistics hardly indicate dramatic improvements in drug use trends among California youth, either.

Results of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health show a slight drop in the number of California teenagers using drugs but quite an opposite trend for those aged 18-25.

The percentage of California youth age 12-17 years using drugs dropped from 11.6 percent in 2002 to 9.9 percent in 2005, according to data collected by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. But the proportion of drug users among the 18-25 age group increased from 18.8 percent in 2002 to 19.55 percent in 2005, the data showed.

The study also found 56 percent of addicts had their first taste of drugs before the age of 18, which is also an average age of drug use initiation in the United States.

One of the problems with DARE -- old or new -- lies in its abstinence-only message, says Brown, a nationally known critic of DARE and its lookalikes.

Because of federal policy mandates today, schools and researchers who want federal funding still must demonstrate that their programs teach abstinence as the only option.

So, inevitably, DARE's core message must be crafted around an abstinence-only model, Brown argues.

That, he says, can not only hinder the intended drug prevention but education in general. He criticizes the approach as too simplistic, and some other research suggested DARE occasionally encouraged drug use, by lumping all drugs into one category.

"While it makes a small part of any educational day, strong evidence suggest that it has a negative effect on adult credibility in school," Brown said, citing his organization's studies. "Our very strong peer-reviewed evidence suggest that teaching them how to make a decision and (that) there's only one correct decision to make comes into conflict with everyday life.

"When the message does not match up with reality, educators may no longer be credible," Brown said.

Dillon dismissed such criticisms as outdated, arguing that the new program's emphasis is on problem-solving. He also stressed that the process of development and evaluation associated with the new program is as scientific as it can get.

But Brown is not still convinced that DARE can stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Brown says DARE's new approach is flawed by several aspects.

"One thing important to understand is that the program was distributed nationwide before the evaluation results were known," he said. "That means this is the equivalent of distributing a polio vaccine and administering it to kids before we ever know how effective it is."

Early results, he said, also had "technical issues" such as only 45 percent of the participants were studied. Another issue, Brown added, was that researchers who developed the program are evaluating their own program rather than having an independent party do so.

Sue Weisenhaus-Braz, director of Champions Recovery Alternative of Hanford, says any early age prevention should be based on proper understanding of the complex nature of addiction.

Weisenhaus-Braz supports the cause of DARE, saying that school-based drug education must be a part of the communitywide solution to the drug problems.

But she is not afraid to say DARE's design is riddled with limitations.

That's because children are predisposed to addiction at a much younger age than 10 or 11, when they first come across DARE education, through a combination of genetic and environmental factors, Weisenhaus-Braz said.

"A lot of kids are already predisposed," she said. "What goes on in classroom and what goes on at home do not connect often times. You can run a DARE program all day long, but there are parents who contribute to delinquency all day long. Home speaks louder than school for most kids."

Also, the current DARE program lacks the continuity of support for those kids who are considered at risk, and its one-size-fits-all approach also wouldn't work, Weisenhaus-Braz said.

One of the things she advocates for is a mentor program for students.

No single message could outlast the fast-changing, decision-altering environment that the kids face today, but long-term monitoring could help keep them on the right track, Weisenhaus-Braz said.

"Maturity, and their life experience as adolescents, is an evolutionary process," Weisenhaus-Braz said. "A message needs to be reinforced in applicable ways as they grow."

The reporter can be reached at 582-0471, ext. 3059.

(Sept. 28, 2007)