I wonder how (counter-) productive those “DARE” programs actually are. They had all those “scared straight” programs going for many years and it turned out they actually did the opposite of what they were supposed to. (And cops continued doing them, long after the evidence came out.)
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the anti-drug programs also did the opposite (I mean, are authority figures telling rebellious young people not to do drugs really going to have the intended effect?), and either the cops don’t know (or care to know, because US cops have little interest in evidence-based approaches to things), or they damned well know it doesn’t work but the whole “reaching out to kids” is such good PR for adults, in making the cops seem cuddly and worthy of more funding, that they keep doing it for that alone.
