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Auditors discovered Louisiana’s newest Drug Abuse Resistance Training curriculum produced combined outcomes on effectiveness.

The Louisiana Legislative Auditor report detailed how this system is funded by a mixture of state and native cash. The Louisiana Fee on Legislation Enforcement awards DARE grants from its portion of the Tobacco Tax Well being Care Fund to native legislation enforcement businesses for his or her packages.

Auditors additionally acknowledged this system has usually revised its curriculums since its inception within the Nineteen Eighties, the most recent being referred to as “Keepin’ it REAL” which focuses on decision-making methods to assist younger individuals keep away from medication.

Latest research cited by the auditor’s workplace discovered this curriculum won’t be useful to lowering substance abuse amongst elementary college college students and would possibly solely be applicable for a slim portion of DARE’s viewers.

The auditors did conduct their very own examine in 2021-2022, and located that fifth and sixth grade college students have been making statistically important enhancements of their data of the fabric discovered within the DARE curriculum.

Nevertheless, their suggestions to DARE have been largely about retaining updated. This consists of modernizing evaluation expertise and growing greater high quality objectives and measurable aims. The identical audit finished in 2022-2023 discovered that they had not up to date these processes.

Regardless of the struggles with modernization, DARE grants awarded to legislation enforcement to conduct these packages totaled a little bit over $8.5 million from 2019-2023.

The best yearly quantity was again in 2019, with nearly $2.1 million. This system has not granted over $1.7 million since.

By the point that cash is allotted statewide, just one sheriff’s workplace (the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Workplace) acquired greater than $100,000 in fiscal 12 months 2023.

From 2019-2023, 91% of Louisiana college districts acquired DARE training. Most of these packages aimed toward fifth and sixth graders with a mean of 503 colleges receiving DARE training yearly.

The variety of DARE officers has dropped from 240 to 175 in that timespan and the variety of taking part legislation enforcement businesses dropped from 71 to 57.