Jeff Sessions says D.A.R.E. worked to keep kids off drugs. It didn’t.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the world’s most sociopathic Keebler Elf, has very bad thoughts about drugs, drug enforcement, and drug treatment.
Unfortunately, Sessions is in charge of setting federal guidelines for all of those things.
Between enforcing mandatory minimums, asking prosecutors to seek the highest possible sentences for non-violent drug offenses, and wanting to prosecute medical marijuana patients, Jeff Sessions has one of the most archaic world views in law enforcement.
His very bad opinions have reached another level of idiocy as Sessions praised drug treatment program and alternative shirt manufacturers D.A.R.E. on Tuesday.
While speaking at the Drug Abuse Resistance Education training conference, Sessions told a room full of Darers how important D.A.R.E. is.
Sessions said,
“D.A.R.E. is, I think, as I indicated, the best remembered anti-drug program today. In recent years, people have not paid much attention to that message, but they are ready to hear it again.”
The Attorney General went on,
“We need you. We need D.A.R.E. to prevent them from finding new victims. I am proud of your work. It has played a key role in saving thousands of lives and futures.”
Hop in the official Kulture Hub Time Travel Machine™ with me back to a simpler time when 5th graders in D.A.R.E. programs were made to promise uniformed police officers that they would never smoke weed.
Started by former Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates, a man who said drug users should be “taken out and shot,” D.A.R.E. was designed to basically scare kids straight and keep them off drugs.
It didn’t.
A 2001 Surgeon General report found that,
“Overall, evidence on the effects of the traditional D.A.R.E. curriculum, which is implemented in grades 5 and 6, shows that children who participate are as likely to use drugs as those who do not participate.”
Additionally, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service issued a report to Congress in 1998 on D.A.R.E.’s effectivity, saying, “Short-term effects on drug use are, except for tobacco use, nonsignificant.”
Basically, the only positive thing D.A.R.E. did was make ironic t-shirts.
I'm glad Sessions wants to bring back D.A.R.E. b/c skater kids need a new round of those shirts.
— Misfit Toy (gun) (@bombsfall) July 12, 2017
Feels like D.A.R.E. even made kids do more drugs.
https://twitter.com/fivefifths/status/884866825087049728
Buzzfeed’s Dominic Holden reached out to Session’s spokesperson for actual evidence that D.A.R.E. worked at all… they declined comment.
https://twitter.com/dominicholden/status/884894985421770752
The incompetence and idiocy of the Trump administration is definitely pretty harrowing, but Jeff Sessions might just be the scariest of the bunch.