Yes, D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) is still active. The program operates in roughly 10,000 U.S. communities and more than 40 other countries, with thousands of trained law enforcement officers delivering lessons in schools. But the D.A.R.E. running today looks very different from the one that became a cultural touchstone in the 1980s and 1990s, and its reputation remains complicated.
What D.A.R.E. Looks Like Now
The original D.A.R.E. curriculum, where a uniformed police officer stood at the front of a classroom and lectured kids about the dangers of drugs, is gone. After years of research showing that approach didn’t work, D.A.R.E. adopted a new curriculum called “keepin’ it REAL,” developed by prevention scientists at Penn State and Arizona State University.
The updated program is built around ten 45-minute lessons for middle schoolers. Instead of scare tactics and lectures, it uses videos featuring real teenagers, storytelling, and role-playing exercises. The core strategy teaches four ways to handle pressure: Refuse, Explain, Avoid, and Leave (forming the acronym REAL). An optional add-on has students create their own prevention media, reinforcing the idea that the messaging comes from kids rather than authority figures. Local sheriff’s offices and police departments, like the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio, still send officers into fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms to lead these sessions.
Why the Original Program Failed
D.A.R.E. became the most widely used school-based drug prevention program in America during the late 1980s and 1990s. It was also one of the most studied. The results were consistently disappointing.
The National Institute of Justice rates the original D.A.R.E. curriculum (1983 to 2009) as having “no effects.” Multiple large-scale, long-term experiments found no statistically significant differences between kids who went through D.A.R.E. and kids who didn’t, whether researchers measured actual drug use, attitudes toward drugs, or self-esteem. A 1994 analysis found no meaningful differences at the two-year mark. A 1996 study extended that finding to five years. Researchers also checked whether D.A.R.E. worked better in cities versus rural areas and found no difference there either.
Some evaluations did find small positive effects right after the program ended, but those gains faded. By late adolescence, students who had been through D.A.R.E. were statistically indistinguishable from those who hadn’t. The problem wasn’t just that the program was ineffective. It was that communities continued funding it for years after the evidence was clear, partly because D.A.R.E. was enormously popular with parents, schools, and police departments regardless of what the data showed.
Does the New Version Work Better?
The “keepin’ it REAL” curriculum has a stronger scientific foundation than the old D.A.R.E. lessons. It was developed through federally funded research and designed around principles that prevention science considers effective: interactive skill-building, peer modeling, and culturally relevant content. The shift from lecturing to role-playing and from officer-centered to student-centered messaging reflects genuine improvements in how researchers understand adolescent behavior.
That said, independent long-term evaluations of D.A.R.E.’s delivery of keepin’ it REAL are still limited compared to the mountain of data on the original program. The curriculum itself has shown promise in controlled research settings, but how well it performs when delivered by police officers across thousands of different classrooms is a separate question. Prevention scientists have historically noted that D.A.R.E.’s organizational popularity can outpace the evidence for its effectiveness, and that pattern is worth keeping in mind even with the improved curriculum.
Why D.A.R.E. Never Went Away
Given its track record, you might wonder how D.A.R.E. survived at all. The answer has more to do with relationships than research. For many communities, D.A.R.E. serves a purpose beyond drug prevention. It puts a friendly police officer in regular contact with young kids, which schools and law enforcement agencies value for community-building reasons. Parents remember going through D.A.R.E. themselves and associate it with safety and structure. The program’s brand recognition is enormous, and it provides a ready-made framework that doesn’t require schools to design their own prevention efforts.
D.A.R.E. also adapted just enough to stay viable. By partnering with university researchers and adopting an evidence-informed curriculum, the organization addressed the most damaging criticism (that its methods were outdated) without dissolving entirely. Whether that adaptation is sufficient remains an open question, but it kept the program alive when many observers expected it to disappear.
The Cultural Afterlife
Part of what prompts people to search “is D.A.R.E. still a thing” is the program’s strange second life as a cultural meme. Vintage D.A.R.E. t-shirts became ironic fashion staples, worn at music festivals and parties in a way that highlights the gap between the program’s goals and its outcomes. The logo is instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up in the 1990s, and the program’s earnest anti-drug messaging has aged into something that reads as both nostalgic and slightly absurd to many adults.
That ironic reputation coexists with a program that still enrolls millions of students worldwide and still receives funding from local governments. D.A.R.E. is simultaneously a punchline and an active institution, which is part of what makes it such an unusual fixture in American public life.