This year, 36 million school children around the world - 26 million in the U.S. - will benefit from D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). This program is a highly acclaimed program that gives kids skills to avoid involvement in drugs, gangs, and violence.

D.A.R.E. was founded in 1983 in Los Angeles and has proven so successful that it is now being implemented in nearly 80 percent of our nation's school districts and in more than 52 countries around the world.

D.A.R.E. is a police officer-led series of classroom lessons that teaches children from kindergarten through 12th grade how to resist peer pressure and live productive drug and violence-free lives.

The program, which was developed jointly by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Unified School District, initially focused on elementary school children. It has now been expanded to include middle school and high school students.

The D.A.R.E. curriculum was designed to be taught by police officers whose training and experience gave them the background needed to answer the sophisticated questions often posed by young students about drugs and crime.

Prior to entering the D.A.R.E. program, officers undergo 80 hours of special training in areas such as:
Forty hours of additional training are provided to D.A.R.E. instructors to prepare them to teach the high school curriculum.