D.A.R.E
Why does America Fake hate weed?
By Stephanie Alexander
Many of us grew up with the soft (or hard depending on where you grew up) bigotry that was D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education program) in the classroom.
I vividly remember police officers and mascots coming into my classroom showing my classmates & I, crack pipes and syringes, then telling us not to do drugs. What a disturbing and inappropriate educational approach.
That was never ok.
Most of us were children, who had no clue wtf a drug was until D.A.R.E. showed us the gateway. For our younger readers, D.A.R.E. was a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that scammed the government for funding to teach nonwhite kids (who weren’t on drugs, we were kids) not to do drugs.
D.A.R.E. was the stepson of the war on drugs that plagued the classrooms of many 90s babies - in the late 90s up until the 2010s. Let’s take a trip (not that kind…wink wink) down memory lane to see what’s the hype about weed, and why America has a love-hate relationship with this thing called drugs. To be honest the term drugs is ableist and outdated, but we’ll let the boomers have it.
In the 1980s “drugs” was a national issue under the Regan Administration - the irony. The nice white lady who was married to Mr. Reagan figured out what her legacy would be: exposing black and brown kids to substances they should not have known about. All in which distracted our parents from what her husband was doing to the Black community. I digress.
Who remembers gazing at a bountiful showcase of the big ‘no no’s’…
dRuGz in class?
On a serious note, why were police officers and mascots coming into our classrooms showing us c*caine, h*roin, and m*th as a means of encouraging us to say no to drugs? Racism, ableism and cruelty, that’s why.
First, it’s illegal to bring drugs into a classroom, period. Second, exposing children implied that the children were on drugs or the children’s family members. At the time, both, none, and one of the two options may have been true. Yet, D.A.R.E.’s approach was an epic failure. It shamed the children that may have been predisposed to drugs because of their socioeconomic status.
D.A.R.E basically said, ‘I know y’all want to do drugs anyway, because you’re Black so, let’s scare you into not using by explaining step by step how to do drugs.’ This makes no sense. The concept of using good police officers to help kids was manipulative and racist due to the mistrust nonwhite and non-white passing people and their children have for law enforcement. At the time there was no legitimate way to ensure children would “listen” to police and just say no, so why did they shove this program down our throats? Structural racism.
Despite the obnoxiousness of D.A.R.E, in 2021 many places in the US and Europe are beginning to decriminalize cannabis which is a step forward. While the Reagan Administration wanted us to believe that “drugs” made our brains worse, research shows that THC can actually have a positive impact on mental health and chronic illness. We can’t speak on illegal substances, but as for legal cannabis, don’t knock it until you try it - at your own discretion of course.
