Seattle Dares to Seek DARE Alternatives : City is latest to defect from venerable anti-drug program, saying it wants better results.

This is a city whose young minds often seem fond of dispatching themselves somewhere else. People speculate about whether it’s the relentless drizzle or the dark aura of the music clubs or the mystique of Seattle rock stars fallen dead under the needle.

Whatever it is, heroin fatalities here rose 294% from 1985 to 1995. A survey showed 88% of high school students had tried alcohol or other drugs.

What’s a city to do? In Seattle this fall, the Police Department canceled its primary drug education program in the schools, DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). Spokane had pulled out a few weeks earlier.

The two cancellations are the latest and most prominent in a trickle of defections from the popular Los Angeles-founded program that sends uniformed officers into three-fourths of the nation’s school districts to teach youngsters how to say no to drugs, gangs and violence. Communities in Colorado, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts and elsewhere have joined the search for alternative drug education programs.

In many cases, there’s talk about budgets and the need to free up officers for crime-fighting duties. There is criticism in conservative circles about parental responsibility and, from the graying liberals, fears that DARE is turning kids into family snitches. In Seattle’s case, it came down to a budget cut and a growing conviction that DARE didn’t work.

“What the research really shows is that the relationship that has developed between children and police officers is very important and very laudable, but the long-term effects on reducing drug and alcohol abuse is unknown and hasn’t been substantiated,” said Nancy McPherson, director of Seattle’s community policing bureau.

A spate of recent studies pointing to a sharp upward curve in teenage drug use (marijuana use climbed 141% from 1992 to 1995, the Department of Health and Human Services disclosed) has made it painfully clear that nobody has figured out what to do about it.

There’s a lot of head-scratching going on: We did such a good job, a remarkable job, really, of bringing down teenage drug abuse in the late 1970s and 1980s. What happened? Does it mean we have to bring Nancy Reagan back?

In some ways, many drug education analysts say, we have been victims of our own success. Substantial reductions over the last 15 years mean today’s youngsters didn’t grow up seeing the street-corner junkies their parents came to know and regret. What do many teenagers have now, these analysts say, except an officer in the classroom telling them drugs are bad for their health?

“In 22 years, I’ve seen the whole thing become a big circle. There’s a generation out there that thinks they invented marijuana,” said Spokane police Sgt. Mike Prim, who is developing an alternative to DARE that will involve a wide range of patrol officers and focus on safety in general.

“Things that I was taught, and things my parents and other people in authority told me, didn’t kick in till I was in my 30s,” Prim says. “We’re expecting after this thing has run out of L.A. for 12 years, and out of here for six years, we want the nation to change?”

Glenn Levant, DARE America’s president, points out that for the slow leak of cities no longer in the program, 275 others have joined this year, including New York City and Washington, expanding the number of cities to 10,000 in 49 nations worldwide.

Most studies critical of DARE’s effectiveness, he says, evaluated an older curriculum, in use before DARE expanded to the junior high and high school level and adopted new interactive techniques for teaching kids, among other things, to resist peer pressure.

Teenagers in surveys generally say their DARE training was beneficial. But what good is it, some wonder, to be told not to use drugs when all the reasons for using drugs are still there?

“The program is kind of like, ‘Don’t do drugs,’ but on the other hand, they don’t give any alternative,” said Miguel Bocanegra, 17. “Like programs where you can actually go to get treatment . . . so there’s things for youth to do besides drugs to begin with.”

Cities like Seattle are trawling for other solutions. The Seattle school district is arming teachers with drug education curricula for every grade level. Some cities are looking at programs like Life Skills Training, developed at Cornell University, which tries to develop a broad range of social skills that can be used to resist drugs.

Bringing more programs into the arsenal is precisely what’s needed, says Lloyd Johnston, a researcher at the University of Michigan, which conducts the annual adolescent drug use survey for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“I think everyone wants to believe DARE works,” Johnston said. “But if in fact it doesn’t, then the real cost is not the wasted program monies; the real cost is the opportunity costs, that all those children grew up without an effective prevention program at the time they really needed one.”

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Drug Use Dilemma

Despite programs aimed at combating drug use by America’s teenagers, the percentage of those using marijuana has climbed in recent years.

Percentage of those age 12 to 17 who reported using marijuana within the last month:

1990: 4.4%

1991: 3.6%

1992: 3.4%

1993: 4.0%

1994: 6.0%

1995: 8.2%

Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Household Survey on Drug Abuse

Researched by PAUL SINGLETON / Los Angeles Times