The End of an Error
I am part of the D.A.R.E. generation.
Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., was an anti-drug education program that originated in Inglewood, California during the Reagan Administration. The program was created in 1983 by LAPD Chief Daryl Gates in collaboration with LAUSD Superintendent Harry Handler. By the time D.A.R.E. was taught to me in the sixth grade in the mid-90s, it was in nearly 75% of all schools as a government-funded program with a curriculum taught by uniformed local police officers. The program aimed to steer elementary school students away from drugs, alcohol, and tobacco by making the substances as unappealing as possible. Students were told to "recognize, resist, and report" any illicit drug use among their peers or in their homes and classrooms were provided with a "DARE box" where students could anonymously submit their reports. In the program I attended, there was an end-of-course assignment for classes to create and act out an anti-drug skit with the best skit being rewarded with a field trip to a local amusement park. The winning class was expected to wear official D.A.R.E. shirts on the day of the trip. There was even a D.A.R.E. graduation which recognized student completion of the program with parents attending a full school-wide assembly.
However, like many aspects of the Reagan Administration's legacy, the D.A.R.E. program fell apart under scrutiny. Multiple studies emerged in the late '90s and early 2000s, showing that the D.A.R.E. program did not live up to its promise in reducing pre-teen drug use. A 2003 GAO study found "no significant differences in illicit drug use" caused by D.A.R.E. which resulted in the program losing significant federal funding. In fact, aspects of the D.A.R.E. program were used to openly mock anti-drug culture with the most visible example being the fact that the pro-drug culture ironically adopted the wearing of D.A.R.E. t-shirts to openly advertise their own illicit drug use. While the program limped around for several years under a rebranding, it made national news in 2015 when its website tried to pass off a satirical piece about marijuana overdoses as fact. It should come as no surprise that the Trump Administration briefly expressed a desire to revive the program with Jeff Sessions leading the charge in July of 2017. Despite 34 years of failed performance, the GOP was more than happy to advocate for a program that brought police into schools and taught children to narc on their parents all while failing to actually make any sort of discernible difference in the lives of America's youth.
But what the D.A.R.E. program did do was to mask the GOP's failed war on drugs. Of course, we must take the idea of failure with a grain of salt. While drug use among pre-teens didn't decrease, what did increase was the number of black and brown young men being put behind bars for the use of minimal amounts of drugs like marijuana. The Controlled Substance Act of 1970 categorized marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance making it illegal to consume for recreational purposes. While it was clear that marijuana was not as dangerous as its fellow Schedule 1 substances like heroin, LSD, and ecstasy, it was added because marijuana was the recreational drug of choice of the countercultural movement. Republicans saw an opportunity to punish both hippies and people of color in one fell swoop. Over-policing in communities of color made sure to disproportionately arrest those individuals for marijuana use. Combined with Draconian three-strike laws, an entire generation of young Black men would end up behind bars as painfully described in Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. While people of color and Whites used illicit drugs at similar rates, people of color were punished much more harshly, especially when it came to the use of marijuana.
While we can never undo the damage of the failed Republican War on Drugs, Tuesday's announcement that the Department of Health and Human Services sent its findings to the Drug Enforcement Agency in which it recommended that marijuana be reclassified is a significant step in the right direction. Despite sky-is-falling rhetoric from the GOP, the gradual legalization of recreational marijuana has not, in fact, caused liberal America to be swallowed up by Satan himself in a sinkhole of epic proportions. Instead, people have continued to live their daily lives and smoke their Mary Jane, only now instead of buying it from sketchy pizza delivery drivers Americans are now buying it from regulated storefront locations throughout 23 states. The GOP will cry that this is Joe Biden playing politics and trying to win over the pothead vote but we all know it's more than that: it's a significant step in undoing a failed Republican policy that never did what it set out to do.
The potential to reclassify marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 is a big freaking deal. Not only in a political sense but in a practical one as well. A reclassification would allow for additional research to take place, something that has been severely hindered up to this point. It would also create a much lower tax rate across the recreational marijuana industry and would make it easier for cannabis businesses to access banking services. While it would not decriminalize marijuana completely, a reclassification would be a step in the right direction and would be both good politics and good policy. Democrats are winning the marijuana messaging and at this point, it isn't even close.
This is simply the latest example of the Biden-Harris Administration doing the right thing. Too many lives have been shattered by the failed War on Drugs. Marijuana does not kill, as those awful 80s PSAs would have you believe. Medical marijuana has proven benefits from reducing anxiety to relieving pain to killing cancer cells. Recreational marijuana remains popular with tens of millions of Americans and the fact that it's now legal in nearly half the country has greatly diminished its influence as part of the American drug trade and has even helped secure the border, a fact that Republicans love to conveniently forget to mention. Part of the allure of millennials smoking marijuana as adolescents was the fact that it was illegal. There was the thrill of doing it at parties, under the bleachers, or even in our own backyards. While marijuana was always advertised as a gateway drug, the fact is that the majority of teenagers who smoked weed stopped there limiting their defiance to one drug and one drug only. Going beyond booze and weed for many of us was simply a bridge too far.
What's ironic in all of this is that this is an issue that Republicans can and should win. After all, their whole spiel is to be against government regulation. But of course, Republicans once again have put their desire to hurt black and brown people ahead of good politics and good policy. Their marijuana myopia has caused them to turn off a generation of voters who were taught to say no to drugs but who actually said yes to weed. Seeing marijuana prohibition gradually end over the past decade and society not completely collapse has been devastating for the GOP. Combined with Barack Obama and now Joe Biden publicly commuting prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, it should come as no surprise just how dramatically the tide is turning on the issue. With nearly 70% of Americans supporting full marijuana legalization, this is an issue that Democrats are winning and winning big. Exactly 40 years later, the end result of the D.A.R.E. program has been an entire generation realizing that marijuana is not as bad and scary as the GOP made it out to be.
Definitely not the takeaway that Republicans were hoping for.
Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., was an anti-drug education program that originated in Inglewood, California during the Reagan Administration. The program was created in 1983 by LAPD Chief Daryl Gates in collaboration with LAUSD Superintendent Harry Handler. By the time D.A.R.E. was taught to me in the sixth grade in the mid-90s, it was in nearly 75% of all schools as a government-funded program with a curriculum taught by uniformed local police officers. The program aimed to steer elementary school students away from drugs, alcohol, and tobacco by making the substances as unappealing as possible. Students were told to "recognize, resist, and report" any illicit drug use among their peers or in their homes and classrooms were provided with a "DARE box" where students could anonymously submit their reports. In the program I attended, there was an end-of-course assignment for classes to create and act out an anti-drug skit with the best skit being rewarded with a field trip to a local amusement park. The winning class was expected to wear official D.A.R.E. shirts on the day of the trip. There was even a D.A.R.E. graduation which recognized student completion of the program with parents attending a full school-wide assembly.
However, like many aspects of the Reagan Administration's legacy, the D.A.R.E. program fell apart under scrutiny. Multiple studies emerged in the late '90s and early 2000s, showing that the D.A.R.E. program did not live up to its promise in reducing pre-teen drug use. A 2003 GAO study found "no significant differences in illicit drug use" caused by D.A.R.E. which resulted in the program losing significant federal funding. In fact, aspects of the D.A.R.E. program were used to openly mock anti-drug culture with the most visible example being the fact that the pro-drug culture ironically adopted the wearing of D.A.R.E. t-shirts to openly advertise their own illicit drug use. While the program limped around for several years under a rebranding, it made national news in 2015 when its website tried to pass off a satirical piece about marijuana overdoses as fact. It should come as no surprise that the Trump Administration briefly expressed a desire to revive the program with Jeff Sessions leading the charge in July of 2017. Despite 34 years of failed performance, the GOP was more than happy to advocate for a program that brought police into schools and taught children to narc on their parents all while failing to actually make any sort of discernible difference in the lives of America's youth.
But what the D.A.R.E. program did do was to mask the GOP's failed war on drugs. Of course, we must take the idea of failure with a grain of salt. While drug use among pre-teens didn't decrease, what did increase was the number of black and brown young men being put behind bars for the use of minimal amounts of drugs like marijuana. The Controlled Substance Act of 1970 categorized marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance making it illegal to consume for recreational purposes. While it was clear that marijuana was not as dangerous as its fellow Schedule 1 substances like heroin, LSD, and ecstasy, it was added because marijuana was the recreational drug of choice of the countercultural movement. Republicans saw an opportunity to punish both hippies and people of color in one fell swoop. Over-policing in communities of color made sure to disproportionately arrest those individuals for marijuana use. Combined with Draconian three-strike laws, an entire generation of young Black men would end up behind bars as painfully described in Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. While people of color and Whites used illicit drugs at similar rates, people of color were punished much more harshly, especially when it came to the use of marijuana.
While we can never undo the damage of the failed Republican War on Drugs, Tuesday's announcement that the Department of Health and Human Services sent its findings to the Drug Enforcement Agency in which it recommended that marijuana be reclassified is a significant step in the right direction. Despite sky-is-falling rhetoric from the GOP, the gradual legalization of recreational marijuana has not, in fact, caused liberal America to be swallowed up by Satan himself in a sinkhole of epic proportions. Instead, people have continued to live their daily lives and smoke their Mary Jane, only now instead of buying it from sketchy pizza delivery drivers Americans are now buying it from regulated storefront locations throughout 23 states. The GOP will cry that this is Joe Biden playing politics and trying to win over the pothead vote but we all know it's more than that: it's a significant step in undoing a failed Republican policy that never did what it set out to do.
The potential to reclassify marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 is a big freaking deal. Not only in a political sense but in a practical one as well. A reclassification would allow for additional research to take place, something that has been severely hindered up to this point. It would also create a much lower tax rate across the recreational marijuana industry and would make it easier for cannabis businesses to access banking services. While it would not decriminalize marijuana completely, a reclassification would be a step in the right direction and would be both good politics and good policy. Democrats are winning the marijuana messaging and at this point, it isn't even close.
This is simply the latest example of the Biden-Harris Administration doing the right thing. Too many lives have been shattered by the failed War on Drugs. Marijuana does not kill, as those awful 80s PSAs would have you believe. Medical marijuana has proven benefits from reducing anxiety to relieving pain to killing cancer cells. Recreational marijuana remains popular with tens of millions of Americans and the fact that it's now legal in nearly half the country has greatly diminished its influence as part of the American drug trade and has even helped secure the border, a fact that Republicans love to conveniently forget to mention. Part of the allure of millennials smoking marijuana as adolescents was the fact that it was illegal. There was the thrill of doing it at parties, under the bleachers, or even in our own backyards. While marijuana was always advertised as a gateway drug, the fact is that the majority of teenagers who smoked weed stopped there limiting their defiance to one drug and one drug only. Going beyond booze and weed for many of us was simply a bridge too far.
What's ironic in all of this is that this is an issue that Republicans can and should win. After all, their whole spiel is to be against government regulation. But of course, Republicans once again have put their desire to hurt black and brown people ahead of good politics and good policy. Their marijuana myopia has caused them to turn off a generation of voters who were taught to say no to drugs but who actually said yes to weed. Seeing marijuana prohibition gradually end over the past decade and society not completely collapse has been devastating for the GOP. Combined with Barack Obama and now Joe Biden publicly commuting prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, it should come as no surprise just how dramatically the tide is turning on the issue. With nearly 70% of Americans supporting full marijuana legalization, this is an issue that Democrats are winning and winning big. Exactly 40 years later, the end result of the D.A.R.E. program has been an entire generation realizing that marijuana is not as bad and scary as the GOP made it out to be.
Definitely not the takeaway that Republicans were hoping for.