Page 439 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

406 Part 4 Contexts for Public Speaking
In Their Own Words

Sample Persuasive Message

D.A.R.E.
by Mitch Bacci
Who can tell me what D.A.R.E. stands for? How many of you in this
room are D.A.R.E. graduates?
When I was in middle school, my classmates and I were some
of the millions of students subjected to the lies and scare tactics
produced by the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, also
known as “D.A.R.E.” For a while it was fun. We played little games,
got cool T-shirts, and watched funny little cartoons. Especially, I re-
member the cartoon about the rabbit snorting cocaine and at that
time it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen (to me and my friends).
By the time I reached ninth grade, I noticed that many of the kids I
grew up with weren’t around anymore. They dropped out of school
and became what the offi cers in the D.A.R.E. program called a
“loser.” Although I cannot simply attribute this all to D.A.R.E., I know
that it did have some part in it, and through my research I realized
that D.A.R.E. is actually counterproductive and encourages kids to
experiment with drugs.
D.A.R.E. is ineffective, sometimes even counterproductive, and
should be terminated from schools worldwide.
Today, I’m going to go over this history of D.A.R.E., some of the
program’s main fl aws, and the effects that it’s had on millions of stu-
dents worldwide and also offer some simple alternatives.
But fi rst I’d like to start by giving you a brief history of D.A.R.E.
According to their Web site, D.A.R.E. is an international educa-
Mitch Bacci
tion program for kindergarten through twelfth graders which seeks to
discourage drug, gang, and violent activity. It was created in 1983 by Los Angeles Police Chief
Daryl Gates. Students enrolled in D.A.R.E. sign a waiver stating that they will never do drugs,
join gangs, and that they will attend a series of lectures put on by the local police department
over a 17-week period of time. Over this 17-week period of time, students participate in sing-
alongs, role-playing exercises, and watch cartoons (like the one I mentioned earlier). Kids are
also given T-shirts and little pins and accessories that bear the program’s slogans, “D.A.R.E.
to keep off drugs” and “D.A.R.E. to say no.” According to Dare.com, these activities are cre-
ated in order to teach the students “resistance skills,” which they believe the students can use
in real-life situations to combat the effects of peer pressure. Experts at D.A.R.E. believe that
peer pressure is one of the main factors contributing to drug use and experimentation in chil-
dren. According to AlcoholFacts.org, in 2004 D.A.R.E. was being used in 80 percent of the
school districts in the United States, 54 countries around the world, and was being taught to
36 million students a year. Since then, the [Tulsa] Oklahoma Tribune has reported that D.A.R.E.
has shown massive drops in circulation of its curriculum due to complaints and lack of funding.
According to that same article, D.A.R.E. is now revising their program in a last-ditch effort to
gain funding.
D.A.R.E.’s goal, like that of any other drug education program, is a good one—to keep kids
off drugs. It’s just how they go about it that’s deeply fl awed.
D.A.R.E. glamorizes drugs by attracting students to the program with T-shirts and other
goodies, which, according to scientists at Wesleyan University, creates a psychological
bond between the two. From my experience I know that D.A.R.E. doesn’t differentiate
between different types of drugs—it just lumps them all into one big category as “risk-taking”
behavior. This, in turn, causes students to believe that drugs don’t differentiate in severity
and leads to heavy experimentation. Students are taught harmful stereotypes such as,
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