Charlotte Waddell, Director of the Children’s Health Policy Center at Simon Fraser University, says people of a certain generation will have experienced drug use prevention programs like “Just Say No” and D.A.R.E. when they were in school. But Waddell says the efficacy of those programs wasn’t thoroughly studied before they were widely rolled out.
“Nobody did a rigorous evaluation to see how well do these work, or do these even work?” She said.
“And when they finally did do, for example, randomized controlled trials of the D.A.R.E. program, they found no benefits for kids.”
Waddell has been studying substance use prevention programs that have been evaluated through randomized controlled trials and found to be effective.
She says programs like Strengthening Families that have proven effective in other jurisdictions could be adapted to a B.C. context and rolled out in schools.
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