I read today that the D.A.R.E. people are finally admitting that their program doesn't work, and in fact, it might cause increased drug use among those who are exposed to it. I am a D.A.R.E. graduate. When I was in 6th grade, I proudly received my D.A.R.E. diploma and t-shirt and then I pledged never to use drugs.

Well, obviously, that's one promise that I never got around to keeping. And looking around, many of my fellow D.A.R.E. alumni have joined me in this. The boy who initiated me into the cult of the psychedelic actually won a D.A.R.E. essay contest when we were 12 and read aloud to the entire school about how drugs were bad. We laugh about it now, but some people might not find such things funny. The D.A.R.E. program is propaganda for the drug war, but well-intentioned. *insert comment about road to hell here* Because drugs are bad, of course, when they are used to excess and for the wrong reasons.

The reason that D.A.R.E. fails and why ultimately the war on drugs is failing is because the rhetoric that it promotes is inconsistent with the truth. I believed everything that I was taught in the D.A.R.E. program for years, until I learned that a lot of it was completely false. It bothered me when many people who I considered intelligent and deep were using drugs. "Aren't they going to throw their lives away?" But they haven't...wasn't I taught that anyone who started using drugs was going to become an addicted waistoid who would drop out of school and die young?

I remember being taught a statistic... something to the effect that anyone who starts using drugs while probably die within the next five years. I was young, hadn't yet learned that statistics are lies and I had no idea what this one was based upon, but I was scared. I decided then that I would never use drugs.

When taught about drug resistance, we were never even told that drugs could have any positive benefits at all. I didn't even know that they felt good. All I knew about the psychoactive affects of drugs were that you tried them once and BAM! you were hooked and you JUST COULDN'T STOP. Obviously, there was no reason to imbibe other than to look cool in front of your peers since the program almost totally centered around ways to resist the evil known as peer pressure.

So what happens when you learn that people who take one puff of marijuana DON'T turn into evil smack-banging heroin addicts with no life and no future the very next day? When you learn that drugs not only feel good, but can open your mind to new experiences as well? You can see it all around you.

The program lumps all drugs together: marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, PCP, ecstasy, crack. They're all the same and can be summed up in one word: EVIL. Alcohol and tobacco, however, are not evil once you're of age (because, ssshhh, don't tell, our funding comes from those industries!), despite the fact that addiction to and death caused by these substances far outweighs the toll that illegal drugs cause on our society.

I'm not saying that D.A.R.E. caused me to use drugs or caused others to not use drugs, but I really think that it has no effect at all. It starts and ends at such an early age, before many kids know what a drug is. I do believe that it is much better to be honest about things however, because once someone finds out that you lie about one thing, everything else that you've said becomes discredited.