I am giving this book three stars because I think the content was good, but it was just organized really poorly. I ended up DNFing it halfway through because I was really frustrated by the lack of chronology. This book should have started with the history of the DARE program, and then had different chapters about aspects of DARE that helped or hurt the community. Instead, it was giving social commentary throughout, which was overly confusing. I'm a DARE hater, and I know it had negative consequences, so I was hoping for more from this book.

Thank you to the University of North Carolina Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DARE stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, and I was a DARE kid (as a kid, part of the fun was saying it as much as possible: I dare you, I dare you, I dare you …). I smoked marijuana in an old, ratty DARE tee and everything, a fact that matters to my life beyond the cliche. Somehow, DARE made drugs look so cool, though I’m pretty sure the “Can I snort that?” game was not the program’s intended effect—or was it?

As told through my own ethnography, basically, I just detailed the premise of Max Felker-Kantor’s upcoming book about DARE—DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools—a popular drug education program that you probably attended as well if you grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. In the same vein as When Crack Was King, one of my best nonfiction 2023 picks, Felker-Kantor’s book accounts for how “DARE and other anti-drug education programs brought the War on Drugs into schools.”

DARE to Say No offers an overarching history of the infamous drug education program which encouraged elementary schoolers to "just say no to drugs." This book focuses on the program's role of police as educators, marking a major pivot in the 1980s and 1990s "war on drugs," while situating the program's popularity within the larger political landscape, such as the moral panics of the Reagan era, the "get tough on crime" attitudes of the Clinton administration, and the growing role of police in everyday life. The broad strokes of the history and implications of DARE were all familiar information to me, but the book's arguments regarding the social impacts of the program and its contextual role were well presented. The language is academic but accessible, if a little dry in its presentation. Even so, it is a useful overview for individuals who didn't live through the era or experience the program firsthand.

3.5 ⭐️

Growing up in the 90s, DARE was a prominent program in my schools. I have K ways found it interesting hearing that this program didn't have the results as expected. This book was a bit redundant and I wished it branched out more. I didn't learn as much new stuff that I had hoped.

I would though really recommend this book to others who were kids during the height of this. I think many would find this insightful.

Thank you to NetGalley and University of North Carolina Press for this advanced reader copy. My review is voluntarily my own.

*3.5
As someone who had to sit through D.A.R.E. in elementary school, DARE to Say No was an interesting look at the program. DARE is one of those programs that you realize is unhelpful and bullshit as you get older. I really enjoyed how Felker-Kantor went into detail about just how ineffective it was to the point of taking funding for programs that would have actually helped. Overall, I think this is a great explainer for anyone unfamiliar with DARE but after a certain point the book becomes very repetitive.

i didn't like it at all. i'm not sure what the issue was but i had to dnf it about 50 pages in and. yeah

This book is very one sided and leaves no space for those of us that the DARE program actually helped to keep off drugs. I have never smoked or done any drugs. I'm proud of that. I have the DARE program and our DARE officer (may he forever R.I.P.) to thank for teaching me how to say NO!! I will not give this author the gratification of finishing this completely biased account of the program. Did it fail? It appears that way as we have a truly devastating drug epidemic on our hands now. Is that the fault of the DARE program? I don't think so. People want someone to blame for everything. I enjoyed the DARE program in fifth grade and I'm thankful that it taught me to stay away from drugs. If I could give this book zero stars I most certainly would, but one star it is I guess.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

The DARE program was one of the most prominent anti-drug programs during the mid-to-late 1980s through the early 2000s. It was established in Los Angeles and quickly spread throughout the United States mainly in elementary schools, creating a alliance between local police departments and the children in these schools. Although the program was praised for its work in keeping children drug-free, there were other aspects to this program that signified an underlying political agenda, which the author discusses throughout this book.

The book appealed to me because of the fact that I was one of those students that completed the DARE program when I was in elementary school. I remember it being a break from the day and a great education program for which I would become (and remain) drug free. I understand Max Felker-Kantor's points in this book and can see where he is coming from. However, I will be honest. It's hard to look at a program like this that seemed so wholesome as a guise to promote potentially conversative values. Don't get me wrong; I think this is wrong to preach political points in schools (even to this day), but the realization is still hard to grapple with.

I thought that the points that Felker-Kantor made were redundant. I wish that the author would have added more information about the effects of DARE in other parts of hte country other than in Los Angeles. He spent entirely too much time focusing on the original location of the program and not enough of places to which this program spread, like where I grew up in Pennsylvania.

I wonder if the ideas in this book would have been better executed in a documentary or a series of articles instead of this book. Again, the author made some great points, but unfortunately, this expose became a little boring due to the redundancy of his information.

I've decided to join the war on drugs, on the side of the drugs. Kidding.

This is a complete history and rundown on the DARE program. I think we all remember attending those classes and writing those essays. As I look back, I can't think of a single person it helped. My age group is stricken with addiction and I definitely remember kids wearing their DARE shirts as they did drugs but unfortunately, this book did not want to focus on parody or jokes like I do.

This is mostly about how DARE turned police into teachers, wasted a bunch of money and called it a W, while bolstering and already militarized police force. They normalized police in schools and attempted to turn them into friends and mentors, and perhaps most disturbingly- teachers. Particularly in communities where tensions were high between citizens and police. I didn't realize that they had children tattling on their own families. That was news to me and I hated to hear it. I guess that was part of the "community policing" aspect.

While I don't remember tattling or a box to narc on people, I do remember them trying to scare us with a DARE Corvette they drove around in. If you do drugs, you'll lose your nice car to the government, kids! What a message.

It's interesting to read this through the eyes of an adult. It's crazy the things the government comes up with. This is a fair account of what went down, how and why.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the chance to read and review.

DARE to say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools by Max Felker-Kantor

Thank you to NetGalley and the University of North Carolina Press for providing a preview copy of this excellent and important book. Like many kids from the 80s and 90s, I too had experiences with the “Just Say No!” brand of drug deterrence. Along with the messages in popular school publications and on sitcoms, my school also participated in some kind of DARE program. I can’t remember if it was an actual DARE program since I don’t remember on going lessons. However, as other PA kids may remember, we were frequently visited by Trooper Ash (who showed up surprisingly in Alex Winter’s awesome Zappa documentary). However, all digressions aside, I bring this up because Max Felker-Kantor has written a book that importantly interrogates these kinds of programs in schools to ultimately conclude that their purpose was more about a PR program for police rather than any kind of drug deterrence. Much like Felker-Kantor’s conclusions about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of DARE, I too recall learning and becoming more interested in drugs as a result of the officer’s visit. I still recall the briefcase full of paraphernalia and can easily remember the feather roach clip, proudly returning home from school to tell my mom I learned what a roach clip was. Nevertheless, Felker-Kantor’s meticulous research into the history, program evaluations, and popular perceptions of DARE help to clarify what its ultimate goal was: to humanize police, while also establishing a continued surveillance system in American schools. I honestly hadn’t thought much about that. I’ve worked in education for nearly 25 years and since Columbine, have sadly come to accept that school resource officers (SROs) have become a part of education. However, this book brings about a better understanding of how these officers have arrived and how DARE tried to tie 9/11 to a need for more police presence in schools. I found this book to be not only insightful, but also necessary for today as more and more ideologies continue to push into schools under the false pretense of protecting children. While not directly stated, Felker-Kantor’s research and analysis presents some important lessons in considering how using children and education can pressure politicians, policy makers and public support into giving up their freedoms or easily accepting increased police presence in our lives. Additionally, I appreciated this book’s analysis of how the presence of police can vary for different groups. Until recently, I didn’t realize that DARE also pressured children to snitch on their parents’ drug and alcohol use. Bettina Love’s amazing book Punished for Dreaming also shared how programs like DARE impact students of color and ultimately cause more harm than good. I highly recommend this book for educators and others working with students and schools to better understand how programs with good intentions might ultimately have harmful outcomes for students. Furthermore, it's important to read to understand how political pressure can often influence learning and pressure schools to accept a greater police presence. There were so many great ideas in this book, and it applies to all of society, not just teachers and schools.

What a massive thank you to the author for writing a neccesary historical account of the D.A.R.E. program of the United States. While an almost nostalgic, highly parodied topic for kids that grew up with it today, D.A.R.E. was once an all-encompassing educational curriculum, a politically prized-talking point for Repulbican (and some Democrats alike), a marketing success, and a blue-line PR ploy. The author does a really good job of seperating himself from the history, while still leaving room for his opinions and viewpoints in a seperate space.

I read through the book consistently highlighting the hypocrisies of the program's message and goals along with what its effectiveness and action looked like. The D.A.R.E. program ws straightforward about its hope to keep kids off drugs, but research points to highly ineffective results. The program pivoted and began to address gangs and family values and community breakdown, yet handled it with police presence (which African-American and LatinX communities were already dealing with an overabundance of) instead of providing funding (and believe me - they had PLENTY of funding) for social services that these communities desperately needed and were asking for. D.A.R.E. was making so much of its funding off assets forfeiture and property seizure from drug busts, and yet spreading a message of 'Just Say No' - this was full of such mixed messaging - I am surprised it wasn't protested more harshly.

D.A.R.E. officials even mocked the researchers who were presenting pure findings and facts because it did not fit their narrative. What sent me in utter bewilderment was the amount of politicians and celebrities who vocally praised this program, after being made aware of its ineffectivity, because it looked so good and fit their political agenda (nuclear family units with 'strong morals', community growth, harsher consequences for drug offenders, police presence increased, decreased social program funding). Being an elementary aged child in the late 90's, I was not as aware of D.A.R.E. as my older peers, but I was utterly fascinated and simultaneously enraged by the hateful and inherently racist rhetoric of its backward messaging. The fact that this program still exists to this day?! Do better with our drug education/prevention funding, America.

This was written like a well-researched thesis, providing incredibly vital information to a history that hasn't been properly documented in an unbiased way in the past. The only thing that could make this this book better would be more relatable and a less academic writing style. This was written by a professor and it shows. While I believe many would be interested in this historical account, like I was, it was written in a way that does not feel like it is for the common reader.

Overall, I am very thankful I read this and that the author brought more of this information to the light of the everyday reader. I feel much more informed and I plan to take what I learned from this book and apply it to my everyday work as a counselor in a school and do greater research and investigation into the trust and legitamacy our school system gives to the programs we are running each year in schools to address societal concerns of children's well-being.

Growing up in the time of the DARE program. I probably have very mixed feeling with the information that this book had. But also with the current generation this might bridge som gap with how things are the way they are.

DARE to Say No by Max Felker-Kantor is a in-depth look at the history of DARE and the impact (or lack of) affected schools, students and the United States as a whole.

Well Documented History of DARE Marred By Undocumented Editorial Commentary. Coming in at over 30% documentation, this is one of the more well-documented books I've come across in my ARC reading over the years. However, the weakness here is that while Felker-Kantor cites nearly every word he says about the DARE program and those involved with it, he then proceeds to make quite a bit of left leaning social commentary that he then fails to document *at all*.

Which is sad, because this is a program that I too grew up in - the first uniformed cop whose name I remember is Deputy John Morgan of the Bartow County (Ga) Sheriff's Office, the DARE officer for much of the Bartow County School System (if not the *entire* school system, at first) in the early and mid 90s. Deputy Morgan became a local legend there in Cartersville and Bartow County, to the tune that he could well have challenged either his then boss or his newer boss when he retired a few years ago for the top job - all because of his work with the DARE program. I even actively went to church with the second Deputy to begin teaching DARE in the BCSS - Deputy Richey Harrell, who was very active with the youth of Atco Baptist Church when his own kids were small and who served on the Deacon Board of the church with my dad.

But despite knowing Richey in particular so well - though as his sons were closer in age to my brothers, they knew him and his family even better than I myself did - as an adult to say my views on policing have changed would be an understatement. Which is where I approached this book from - having been a former DARE student who now sees just how problematic the entire program was, from top to bottom, and indeed who even concurs with Felker-Kantor on just how problematic the program's insistence on using active duty police officers as front line teachers really is.

Not to mention agreeing with him on how truly ineffective it is. Not even just with a police officer teaching children he isn't connected to outside the school. Again here, I know people directly who went through these same DARE programs in the same system and also knew Richey as well as my family did - and who later fell so deep into drugs that they lost pretty well everything except their actual life, yes, including their kids.

Had Felker-Kantor at minimum documented his editorial comments such as about the disparate impacts of the war on drugs based on race - not hard to do - or other related commentary about mass incarceration (also not hard), the rise of the militarized police force (ditto), or any similar editorial comments, this would have been a slam dunk five star book, even with the left leaning commentary. It is that strong and that complete a history of the program, including discussions of its *continued existence* in a much diminished capacity - something I myself did not know until reading this book.

So read this book for a truly comprehensive history of something so many of us experienced first hand, particularly those of us who grew up in the 80s through early 2000s. And may we finally kick this particular program to the curb in favor of something that might actually work.

Recommended.

I appreciate all of the historical context behind the DARE program. Most of us remember going through it in school and i definitely thought about how problematic it was as i got older. With some tweaks and focusing on harm reduction, i think DARE could’ve been more successful in today’s world.

Thank you Netgalley and University of North Carolina Press for a digital ARC of this book.

This is a very attainable and easy to follow and read book about the DARE program that began being used in schools in the early 80s and spread across the country and the world.

What unfortunately a lot of people don't know is DARE had nothing to do with teaching kids to stay off drugs, its actual purpose was a campaign to reshape the image of police and to combine it with a war on drugs is an a politicians golden ticket.

If you know nothing about the program or politics this book has you covered. It goes over names dates and tells you who the players are and the rolls they had in this madness.

The last two chapters get into the deep stuff. The confusion that the police had over why L.A schools didn't want the program after 91'

Also the questionable question box where students were turning in their own parents for drug use and those parents were getting arrested. And all the studies being done that showed that the DARE program actually did more harm than help.

So while some of us laughed while we smoked pot while wearing our DARE t-shirt others had family members arrested and their lives torn apart just so the police could try to get people to respect their authority.

I would like to say that I enjoyed this book and that it gave an unbiased look at a program that I was fond of as a child and am fond of today as a parent. However, I can not. This author seems to have an axe to grind about this program and his writing of this book is VERY slanted about how bad this program is, was, and according to him, always will be. He does NOT like this program and I couldn't read much past the 1st chapter becuase of his HORRIBLE bias.

The title of this book caught my eye because I grew up with DARE in high school and the completely unavoidable PSA campaigns throughout the 1990s. Ironically, drugs were everywhere and easily accessible, and this remains true today. In other words, DARE, and the 'war on drugs', was a failure in a variety of ways. And that's what Felkner-Kantor examines in this book -- how DARE not only didn't work, but in fact did more harm than good.

Perhaps the greatest harm that DARE did was the normalization of policing and police involvement in school and the lives of teenagers. Rather than examining and raising awareness of the impact of drug abuse and addiction, DARE planted the seeds of surveillance culture in the US. This was a link that I had not made before, but have often wondered how we got to the state we're in. For me, this was an eye-opening indictment of the DARE program, and Felkner-Kantor did an excellent job of bringing this to light.

So, while DARE failed to curb drug use, it succeeded in furthering America's love of cultural division, pseudoscience, discrediting social science in favor of 'law enforcement', and tampering with its education systems.

Overall, this was a very enlightening examination of a uniquely American approach to the "drug problem."

I give this 4 stars because it contains a tremendous amount of new information about D.A.R.E, and issues surrounding it, and it is extremely well referenced. Nearly half of the pages are of references and notes. However, I found it to be repetitive – with the same information stated and quoted multiple times. It could have said as much in half the pages.

No one says that teaching children to not use (illegal) drugs is a bad thing. However, there has been a great deal of criticism of the entire D.A.R.E. program from its inception. A tremendous amount of money has been spent on something initially viewed as a “cheap” project! A great deal of effort and money has been put in to getting celebrity endorsements and corporate sponsors – who gained advertising. Police are trained in law enforcement; teachers are trained in delivering education. Police officers teaching the D.A.R.E. program was problematic from its inception because they are not educators. Yet, the D.A.R.E. program was a darling of parents, politicians, policymakers, school administrators, law enforcement, and the media. To speak against it was like saying bad things about Santa Claus around Christmastime. That included researchers who found over many studies that D.A.R.E. failed to significantly reduce drug use among its graduates – and even significantly increased drug use among its graduates who were white, suburban, middle-class adolescents. In short, there is a lack of evidence that it actually worked, Indeed, when the GAO (Government Accounting Office) came out with its study of DARE. In 2001, it was no longer on the list of proven programs, threatening federal funding – under laws which mandated that schools have an “effective drug education program” – ironically lobbied for by D.A.R.E.! So, D.A.R.E. closed ranks, put in an “Us vs. Them”, but against researchers and scientific methods.

D.A.R.E. had some other (unintended) consequences. Some kids turned in their parents, being assured that nothing bad would happen as a result. It took away a social studies class every week from D.A.R.E. students. It heightened a culture war. The “just say ‘no’” message became extended to things that kids just didn’t want to do – like science homework or taking out the trash. D.A.R.E, messages were spoofed, and it was parodied and used ironically as a political move against poor and irrelevant information.

D.A.R.E. had as an unstated goal to normalize police in the lives of (then) adolescents. Over time, as those D.A.R.E. graduates became adults, more of the public was already primed to have much more policing and surveillance in their lives. Indeed, much is happening in the 2020s which would have been unthinkable in the 1970s! Deputy Chief and DARE America Executive Director Glenn Levant explained "You have to have programs like DARE in place so police aren't viewed as an occupying army." Indeed, it was used as propaganda to try to soothe the public after such things as the Rodney King-inspired riots in LA happened. After Columbine and 9/11, the DARE Officer had a new role: School Resource Officer - aka "school police officer". This more fully integrated DARE as part of the school policing project. It was also a public-private partnership in the early days of such things, leading to more acceptance of those.

D.A.R.E. extended its reach several times and ways. They expanded to include anti-gang units and anti-violence units, but also included several issues which are morality and even religious morality – things which are better taught in homes or by religious organizations.

What D.A.R.E. had going for it were very good advertising campaigns. D.A.R.E. America, its overseeing administrative arm, saw to it that the program was consistent everywhere – even though parts of it were seen by state and local school boards as not being applicable to their communities. It was a fantastic money-maker – especially for the “private” side of that public-private partnership. Its advertising cleverly hid what it was – it was a policing operation, not an educational one.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

I think is a very important topic. I want to give it 5 stars for topic and content, but 3 stars for execution. I'm used to reading academic texts so that doesn't generally scare me away, but it was an effort to read in terms of organization and repetition (and oddly consistent typos.) I'm glad to have read it because it is a different angle on larger drug war strategies, but I wouldn't ask students to read it. They would struggle.