I was a little creeped out when my daughter started chanting the memorized lines she learned from DARE, such as "Alcohol is a drug and drugs aren't for me!" It reminded me of the mindless "nowIlaymedowntosleep..." crap that was stuck down my throat in school in Oklahoma.

I shrugged off my daughter's parrot-like repititions until one day I wanted to have a glass of wine with dinner. I bought some Two Buck Chuck at Trader Joes and figured I would do my heart some good while enjoying a nice glass of Cabernet. Being the only drinker in the house, a bottle of wine easily lasts me a week, and once every few months I will imbibe.

Imagine my horror lifting my glass to my lips hearing my daughter shriek: "DON'T DO DRUGS MOMMY! OH NO MY MOTHER IS ON DRUGS!!" It took a while to calm her down and convince her that no, Mommy is not some freaky crack whore, Mommy just likes a little vino with her prime rib.

After that, I remained a little guarded about DARE but not overly concerned. Until today. I was reading my college text book Introduction to Psychology by Rod Plotnik, trying to remember the parts of the personality according to Freud (who smoked like 30 cigars a day but that's a different story.) I perked up when I happened upon a research focus study entitled How Effective Is the DARE Program?

I wasn't in the least surprised to find out that the DARE program is not at all effective. With a budget of 600 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR, they're just not getting it right. Oh, of course the people involved with DARE will tell you how incredibly effective it is, and who but a monster would argue with the people who are telling children not to do drugs? But shouldn't the government shake their booties a little bit and find a method of keeping kids off of drugs that DOES work??? The amount of kids doing drugs has doubled in the 90s. Doubled! And DARE started in the 80s!

After Googling DARE I found other people who were let in on this little secret. One is A Different Look at DARE, well worth a look if you have a kid in school.

This is part of the problem I have seen with DARE. I'm not a psychewhatchamacallit so take my opinions for what they are.

Alcohol is not necessary. If you wanted to sit down and make a list of all of the positive aspects of alcohol, that would be a mighty short list. However, there is a way to drink alcohol that is not damaging, as millions of people have shown. A drink now and then isn't going to hurt most of us. In an effort to get kids not to drink alcohol, the DARE people are scaring the living crap out of them. That's going way overboard; not solving a problem, just creating a new one. In effect, DARE has put a wedge between my daughter and me, scaring her into thinking that her mom is "on drugs" and diminishing her trust in me.

This overboard "solution" reminds me of the people who try to keep sex education out of school. To me that is the most stupid, insane (hold on let me get my thesaurus) obtuse, brainless, and doltish idea in the world. Before a kid is allowed a drivers license he/she takes classes, written tests, and practice with parents and a teacher. Stay with me here, I don't mean for this to sound creepy. Why would we want to completely shield a kid from sex, maybe even lying to him/her about it (cabbage patch, storks,) making the kid feel ashamed ("SEX IS DIRTY!") and then one day push her out into the world as an adult and expect them to have healthy relationships with members of the opposite sex? I've seen plenty of naive adults have all kinds of troubles because of a improper attitudes inflicted on them when they were kids. Not to mention the pregnant teenagers out there.

There are tasteful, appropriate books for virtually every age group out there that help a parent introduce their child to their bodies and sexual functions. Teach the kid modesty and what's appropriate behavior, don't shelter the kid. You know the saying Knowledge is Power? The opposite is true: Ignorance is Weakness.

When someone says a cuss word around my daughter I don't flip out, I look at it is an opportunity to teach her. Wow, that word kind of made you feel bad didn't it? That person seems kind of mean and stupid huh? If you say bad words you could make people feel bad too.

Same if we see someone smoking. That person really stinks. See they way he coughs? He's going to die early. People I loved hurt me by dying young from smoking. Smoking makes it hard to do karate and play basketball. Did you know a month's worth of cigarettes costs as much as an Xbox?

I don't want my daughter to someday go out on a date with a horny teenage boy if her head is full of nonesense. I don't want her going to a party and reciting stupid chants to people "Alcohol is a Drug and Drugs aren't for Me!" I want her to make intelligent decisions and think for herself. I want her to know why drinking isn't going to help her and that there are better ways to solve problems. Not just recite a list of reasons, but really know for herself. I want her to have respect for her body and not share it indiscriminately.

I read my daughter the section in my psychology book about DARE and told her that adults make mistakes and it's good to question authority. The same authority that is spending a lot of freaking money and taking up valuable class time on a program that doesn't work.