The Biggest Failure of Our Childhood

I once saw a guy smoking pot... while wearing a D.A.R.E. shirt. That just tells you something

DARE came to my school once. I started sobbing loudly because they said “anybody who smokes dies.” My parents were smokers, so 7 year old me was pretty upset about police officers telling me my parents were going to die. A teacher had to pull me aside and had to tell me that my parents were most likely not going to die anytime soon because I would not stop crying

my most vivid memory from D.A.R.E. is me writing a strongly worded letter in the packet that we had to fill out, because part of the packet was about “hanging out with the right crowd” and it said that kids whose parents were incarcerated were likely to be incarcerated themselves and not to hang out with them. my dad was incarcerated, and i did not take kindly to being told that i was basically destined to go to prison and unworthy of friendship. 😐

It’s the rat park theory. When rats were given things to do—not just basic needs like food and water but games, special little treats, companionship, etc—they turned down the drugs. Sometimes they tried them, but the other stuff was more rewarding than the drugs. The rats alone in a bare cage with nothing but the bare necessities to keep them living did the drugs. So actually giving the kids more pizza to keep them off drugs isn’t far off.

There is an ad in new Zealand about smoking where a guy smokes for years and then his dog gets lung cancer from the second hand smoke and has to be put down and that is the most affective anti smoking campaign I’ve ever seen

Me before DARE: “Weed is what my dad pulls in the yard!” Me after DARE: knows all slang terms, average price, immediate effects, side effects, and history of all drugs

They had us all convinced that it would be so hard to reject drugs, like our friends were going to pin us down and shove the joints into our mouths. In reality, this was the conversation: "You want a hit?" "Nah, no thanks." "Okay."

I had the best anti-drug talk from my parents. “If you manage to get ahold of anything, we’ll do them with you”. Everything is lame as a teenager, when you parents want to do it with you.

I think the green screen man was trying to tell us, “ Don’t do weed. Do acid”

Literally a D.A.R.E instructor yelled at us to not do drugs very violently and 5 months later he died of a drug overdose

I was on ADHD meds throughout most of my childhood during the 90s so when I started to hear things like "don't do drugs" I would get confused because I actually did drugs and they helped me function. When I brought this up they would always say things like "well you can only take them if a doctor says it's okay". Then I would ask what was the difference between good drugs and bad drugs. I never seemed to get a straight answer other than "they're illegal and you'll get in trouble if you do them". Then I'd do the classic "rabbit hole of why" and they'd find an excuse to move on

DARE stressed me tf out as a kid. Like I'd think my parents were about to die every time they wanted to have a beer or something because of the shit that DARE was pumping into my brain

Remember kids if someone offers you drugs say, “Thank you” because drugs are expensive

D.A.R.E is the reason I don’t do drugs. D - Drugs A - are R - really E - expensive

As someone who gained a lifetime appreciation for reading books thanks to my school bribing me with a free full pan pizza every so often for keeping up on my reading, you might have a point about that pizza slice.

The only thing that my local DARE program contributed to my community was inspiring the guidance councillor in my school to attempt to invent a similar program about suicide prevention and teaching kids about mental health, developmental disabilities, etc. It was REALLY good, and despite a few flaws it was very well thought out, and she was able to get other schools and psychologists in the region on board. Unfortunately, though it ended up ultimately failing because she couldn’t get any funding to produce programming materials for use in other parts of the province. :(

You CANNOT convince me that green-screen monster man wasn't invented by someone high out of their mind

I think people really underestimate what pizza is to a young person.

I love how the “nonsense” conversation was actually just a normal boring conversation about her painting her room but they just pretended to sound high when they said it so it would sound dumb

I had no exposure to drugs before DARE, i literally learned everything i knew about drugs from DARE at that time. After learning that if i did drugs i would literally die, and from the stress of school and being bullied every day i did drugs so i would die. But as you might imagine i didn't die but got insanely high instead, got attacked by a giant psychedelic rainbow number 8, and passed out on the kitchen floor for a couple hours. Only to be roused by my grandmother telling me to do that in my room instead because i was in the way of cooking dinner.