As of this month, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., the nation's largest anti-drug non-profit group, will no longer indoctrinate public school elementary kids against the evils of marijuana.
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That self-congratulatory claim is itself dubious, however, since several studies and government audits over the years have argued that D.A.R.E. has actually been responsible for rising rates of pot smoking among adolescents, who might not have known anything about ganja if it wasn't for being exposed to it by D.A.R.E. Indeed, this controversy is why D.A.R.E.'s funding in recent years has plummeted from more than $10 million per year to just third that amount, and why, hoping to reverse that trend, the group recently unveiled a new and hip anti-drug campaign called “Keeping It Real.”
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).