Not only were the boring lectures by policemen ineffective, but often they involved simply berating students not to use drugs and bombarding them with claims about the dangers of drugs. Sometimes, students ended up having older relatives who used drugs and they knew that police officers were hyperbolizing their claims, which sometimes resulted in a “boomerang effect,” where students who’d participated in D.A.R.E. were actually more likely to use drugs.

D.A.R.E. programs were mostly the same nationwide. They focused on resisting peer pressure and didn’t address the experiences of most students across the country, which more often involved being invited to sell drugs to help make money or being surrounded by older influences. In this way, D.A.R.E.’s curriculum only really considered white suburban teenagers.

According to Scientific American, although behavioral scientists were suggesting different approaches as early as 1998, D.A.R.E. wouldn’t adopt them until more than a decade later. Once legislation was introduced that mandated that drug prevention programs be “evidence-based,” D.A.R.E. was forced to concede and change their policies into ones that were actually proved to have an effect.

With this, D.A.R.E.’s curriculum was shifted into a program called “keepin’ it REAL.” And rather than being an “anti-drug” program, it’s “centered on decision-making skills.”