"Dare, or the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, was created in 1983 by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County school district. From the start, the program was a success. Its stated goal was "to equip elementary-school children with skills for resisting peer pressure to experiment with tobacco, drugs and alcohol." The initiative was embraced by police departments and politicians, and within just a few years the Dare curriculum had spread to more than three-quarters of the country's school districts."
"More than three million students participated annually, and many were taught that even one toke can end in homelessness and despair. The group received admiring press, and was funded by Congress and various philanthropies; the budget at Dare headquarters eventually approached twenty-five million dollars a year. Nancy Reagan and the White House praised the program, and it received support from major companies, from Kmart to Kentucky Fried Chicken."
Republicans have become adept at creating broad coalitions in which supporting Trump is the only requirement. Democrats get tied up with litmus tests. Two nineteen-eighties organizations aimed to convert people to a cause and build enduring grassroots movements: Dare and madd. Dare, created in 1983 by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County school district, aimed to equip elementary-school children to resist peer pressure to experiment with tobacco, drugs, and alcohol. The curriculum spread to more than three-quarters of U.S. school districts, reached over three million students annually, and attracted funding from Congress, philanthropies, corporations, and praise from the White House. madd arose after thirteen-year-old Cari Lightner was killed by a repeat drunk driver, prompting her mother, Candy, to found Mothers Against Drun
Read at The New Yorker
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]