This topic is important because it’s good to see when something works and doesn’t so you can improve upon it, the D.A.R.E program in the early 1980s. The tactic of the dare program was to scare and shame teens out of using. That backfired in a way that didnt expect, and most teens that did use where looked at as crimales, like a creepy dude in alley way in a trench coat, that image was forged by the dare program. The program started in 1983 in Los Angeles California to combat the major cocaine and meth use in the inner city. A 1998 study noted that out of all the people that went through the dare program, only 50 percent decrease likelihood of high-risk drug use. If you were one of the millions of children who completed the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, or D.A.R.E., between 1983 and 2009, you may be surprised to learn that scientists have repeatedly shown that the program did not work. Despite being the nation’s most popular substance-abuse prevention program, D.A.R.E. I asked the security guard, Chris on if he thought the dare program was subjected to certain demographics of race. What he responded

 “I don’t think they tried to target certain groups but yet again, i went to the dare program in high.school. It was about one hour away from Seattle(where he was living at the time) and it was just full of white kids. But what i do know trying to shame people out of drug use doesn’t work”. Basically chris was saying he didn’t know to much about they would look down on certain groups of people , but he knows that the program just flat out didn’t work. I asked my mother what she had to say on the matter. She said: “The war on drugs has been statistically targeted toward African Americans and hispanics. This has raised racial tension. It criminalized addiction, which is increasingly seen as an illness, and increased incarceration rates for non-violent drug

offenders exponentially. This has somewhat hidden the underlying real problem of poverty and lack of access to medical care.

Incarceration just leads to a vicious cycle and families causing more poverty, separated families, and continuation of drug sales by their children.

I believe that the focus needs to change to treatment instead of criminalizing and incarcerating addicts. As of now it seems like a downward spiral.”