Bennett Scoffs at ‘Touchy-Feely’ Approach to Drug Prevention

Decrying “touchy-feely exercises designed to enhance self-esteem,” federal drug czar William J. Bennett on Tuesday called for more stringent anti-drug policies inside schools and drug education that stresses resistance to peer pressure.

The former education secretary, in a speech at George Mason University that his aides billed as “a major address on drug education,” said efforts “that never manage to curtail drug use ultimately contribute to public cynicism about drug prevention.”

Bennett, director of the office of national drug control policy, said that “many students who have taken drug education courses--even the best such courses--have later gone on to use drugs,” some only a few hours after attending an anti-drug class.

Experts agree “that simply presenting information to students doesn’t steer them away from drug use,” he continued. “If anything, well-packaged information on drugs can even serve to pique youthful curiousity about them.”

Bennett directed his harshest words against “the vague and old-fashioned bromides of dime store political science--all that ‘feeling good about oneself’ and ‘nonjudgmental decision making,’ all that clinical, antiseptic information sharing, on the one hand, and mushy, therapeutic confidence-building on the other.”

“Sound prevention efforts should be made of better, sterner, more resilient stuff,” said Bennett, who as the nation’s top education official in the Ronald Reagan Administration often stirred controversy with comments critical of educators’ performance.

He described as most encouraging drug education that emphasizes “learning how to say no to peers. Peer resistance is rooted in the very sensible view that many young people don’t see themselves as vulnerable and are often more likely to follow the actions of friends than heed the warnings of parents and teachers.”

Such an approach, however, is not “the drug education equivalent of the polio vaccine,” Bennett said. While peer resistance is able to dissuade some students from using drugs, he said it is crucial “to determine how well it works, when it works and also when it does not work.”

Bennett cited a drug education program in a Washington state school that appeared to be a model. But it was learned that after school, as many as 70% of the student body used drugs.

“What was wrong here . . . was the absence of any clearly established school policy about drug use--an explicit message about the rules of school and an implicit message about the rules of society,” Bennett said.

He urged adoption of “unambiguous, straightforward and consistently applied” policies: “If you use drugs, your parents will be notified, and you will be suspended. Repeat offenders face expulsion. Readmittance is often conditioned on a written promise to stay away from drugs, and to undergo counseling or treatment where appropriate.”

Law enforcement has a critical role in preventing drug use, especially among students, Bennett said.

“In a neighborhood where a teen-ager is likely to be offered drugs two, three or four times on his way home from school, tough rules and how to say no will not be enough for some of our students,” he said.

Bennett recalled his tour two weeks ago of a drug-ridden neighborhood in Los Angeles where police barricaded some streets and operated patrols that cooperated with neighborhood watch groups.

Crime dropped and school attendance went “way up,” he said. “Perhaps as many as 200 additional students went to school once a police presence was established. . . . If that isn’t drug prevention, then I don’t know what is.”