More than 40 years after former First Lady Nancy Reagan launched her famous “Just Say No” advertising campaign, Texas and the rest of the nation are once again trying to combat youth drug use through public school awareness programs.
The Drug Abuse Resistance Education initiative — commonly known as D.A.R.E. — was introduced to schools in the early 1980s. It was designed to equip elementary and high school students with the skills to avoid drugs by standing up to peer pressure, but the program began to fade out of school districts across the country by the middle of the 2000s due to lack of results. This hasn’t stopped other anti-drug programs from taking its place over the years as the country constantly scrambles to figure out how to solve the problem of youth drug abuse.
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