National D.A.R.E. Day is observed on the second Thursday of April every year by schools around the country. The acronym D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. On National D.A.R.E. Day, law enforcement officers visit schools around the United States spreading the word about drug and substance abuse. They discuss the dangers of drug abuse, how to avoid drugs, and the penalties for those who choose to be involved with them.
On this day, school districts invite those officers to interact and work with students in a controlled environment, all in the interest of promoting safety and well-being. The program employs different approaches for different age groups. The education that takes place during this day also offers advice on how to identify high-risk students and the secret language of the drug underworld.
The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E) program enables students to interact with police officers in a controlled, safe, classroom environment. This helps students and officers meet and understand each other in a friendly manner, instead of having to meet when a student commits a crime, or when officers must intervene in domestic disputes and severe family problems. The Surgeon General reports that positive effects have been demonstrated regarding attitudes towards the police, when these type of friendly interactions take place.
Studies of D.A.R.E. by the Research Triangle Institute and the Journal of the national Medical Association found that D.A.R.E. graduates are five (5) times less likely to initiate smoking compared with non-D.A.R.E. control groups, and report lower levels of tobacco use in 5th and 6th graders in the one to two years following program graduation.
