When I was in elementary school I was a good kid. I was very well behaved, especially in school. I got good grades. I didn’t cause too much trouble even at home. I did activities like acting classes, singing, and I was also the poster child for MDA around this time. I didn’t have time to get in a lot of trouble. From an early age my mother had also instilled the fear of “God” into me when it came to using cigarettes, booze or other forms of drugs. I was the perfect candidate for DARE.
Growing up in the 1980s/1990s was a weird time for drugs. Nancy Reagan was insisting we just say no to doing drugs. We had commercials where we were shown that our brain looked like a fried egg if we used drugs. And then there was the DARE program. It stood for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. It was targeted primarily at preteens and early teenagers. My class was the first at our school, and we were in the sixth grade. We had high schoolers who would come and motivate us about not using drugs, but they had never gone through the program themselves.
The initiative supposedly came out of Los Angeles and moved across the country. By the early 90s it was in Northwest Ohio at my small farm school. The officer who served as the DARE officer would be on campus from then on quite regularly. To be truthful, seeing his police cruiser parked at campus all the time was quite disconcerting. I never got completely used to it. All of us got to know the officer, who was a police sergeant, but I never truly felt like he was someone I could trust to tell anything.
The educational process was interwoven with our class. We would have to have times when the sergeant. came in and educated us. I was always eager to participate because I believed that drugs were bad for me and that it was important to educate everyone about the dangers taking drugs caused. I really bought into all of the crap that we were being taught, much of it inaccurate and irresponsibly taught.
However, I was never truly able to be a part of the program. Like most things, as the disabled person in class, I was considered an outlier. I would get to participate sometimes in class stuff, but I really wanted to be a DARE ambassador. I was perfect for it. I was responsible. I didn’t do drugs. I thought drugs were bad. I believed all the things the program was teaching me, because my mother had taught me the same things. However, DARE didn’t value me. DARE didn’t want me.
Everybody wanted to be chosen to be a DARE ambassador. You got occasional school perks although I can’t exactly remember what they were. All of the cool kids were chosen. I thought for sure I would be chosen because I was so good at avoiding using drugs. I really believed that the sergeant. would see what a “good girl” I was, and recognize I deserve to be an ambassador of the program. But I wasn’t chosen. I was rendered insignificant to the program. So, things changed for me very quickly after that.
I became resentful because I saw that the people that were being chosen were not people that believed in the program. When the sergeant wasn’t around they would laugh about what he taught. The ambassadors were out using cigarettes, something that was forbidden by the program. They were out drinking booze. They were not following the rules of the program. In fact, they were doing things that were hypocritical to the teachings we were being taught. It was then that I realized that this program was a popularity contest. It was a load of crap.
It was equally as frustrating to discover that I had been lied to, so if I’ve been lied about this, what about actually using drugs? It was then that I stopped caring about whether drugs caused me harm or not. My friends and I started smoking. We started drinking. We would steal cans of beer from my friend’s mother’s house in the summer following my time in DARE. We would also go to 7-11 in town and sneak dip and other tobacco products into our bags.
I used more tobacco the summer after I graduated from DARE. Not only did the program fail me, but it made me turn towards drugs. Today I’m a proud user of weed – a drug that has done amazing things for my chronic pain. I was afraid to try weed the first time because of the BS programs like DARE teach you, but it’s ended up being one of the most important medicines I take – the thing that often gets my through very painful nights.
At the end of the day, the DARE program was an absolute failure. There is a reason why so many of us now refer to the program as drugs are really excellent. They are, especially if you know how to use them.
I’m sorry sergeant, that you didn’t see me as valuable enough to the program to make me an ambassador. The program is a failure, and I’m proof that drugs are what you make of them. Some of them help. Some of them harm. We need to be realistic when dealing with controlled substances. That’s the way to educate people. Not fear mongering or lies or ableism.
Shout out to my friend who runs a writing group I am in, writer and educator,, Jay Wiseman for reminding me we used to refer to DARE as drugs are really excellent. He helped me name this article.
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