The Biggest Failure of Our Childhood 

There is an ad in new Zealand about smoking where a guy smokes for years and then his dog gets lung cancer from the second hand smoke and has to be put down and that is the most affective anti smoking campaign I’ve ever seen

Literally a D.A.R.E instructor yelled at us to not do drugs very violently and 5 months later he died of a drug overdose

my most vivid memory from D.A.R.E. is me writing a strongly worded letter in the packet that we had to fill out, because part of the packet was about “hanging out with the right crowd” and it said that kids whose parents were incarcerated were likely to be incarcerated themselves and not to hang out with them. my dad was incarcerated, and i did not take kindly to being told that i was basically destined to go to prison and unworthy of friendship. 😐

They had us all convinced that it would be so hard to reject drugs, like our friends were going to pin us down and shove the joints into our mouths. In reality, this was the conversation: "You want a hit?" "Nah, no thanks." "Okay."

Remember kids if someone offers you drugs say, “Thank you” because drugs are expensive

DARE came to my school once. I started sobbing loudly because they said “anybody who smokes dies.” My parents were smokers, so 7 year old me was pretty upset about police officers telling me my parents were going to die. A teacher had to pull me aside and had to tell me that my parents were most likely not going to die anytime soon because I would not stop crying

I had the best anti-drug talk from my parents. “If you manage to get ahold of anything, we’ll do them with you”. Everything is lame as a teenager, when you parents want to do it with you.

It’s the rat park theory. When rats were given things to do-not just basic needs like food and water but games, special little treats, companionship, etc-they turned down the drugs. Sometimes they tried them, but the other stuff was more rewarding than the drugs. The rats alone in a bare cage with nothing but the bare necessities to keep them living did the drugs. So actually giving the kids more pizza to keep them off drugs isn’t far off.

I once saw a guy smoking pot... while wearing a D.A.R.E. shirt. That just tells you something

My favorite DARE related memory is that in the five years between my brother taking DARE and me taking DARE, they had to replace the officer who ran the program because the original officer was arrested for selling drugs to kids.

I was on ADHD meds throughout most of my childhood during the 90s so when I started to hear things like "don't do drugs" I would get confused because I actually did drugs and they helped me function. When I brought this up they would always say things like "well you can only take them if a doctor says it's okay". Then I would ask what was the difference between good drugs and bad drugs. I never seemed to get a straight answer other than "they're illegal and you'll get in trouble if you do them". Then I'd do the classic "rabbit hole of why" and they'd find an excuse to move on

The only thing that my local DARE program contributed to my community was inspiring the guidance councillor in my school to attempt to invent a similar program about suicide prevention and teaching kids about mental health, developmental disabilities, etc. It was REALLY good, and despite a few flaws it was very well thought out, and she was able to get other schools and psychologists in the region on board. Unfortunately, though it ended up ultimately failing because she couldn’t get any funding to produce programming materials for use in other parts of the province. :(

Me before DARE: “Weed is what my dad pulls in the yard!” Me after DARE: *knows all slang terms, average price, immediate effects, side effects, and history of all drugs*

Ngl i was so sheltered as a kid that the way i learned that drugs *existed* was through DARE.

I love how the “nonsense” conversation was actually just a normal boring conversation about her painting her room but they just pretended to sound high when they said it so it would sound dumb

DARE stressed me tf out as a kid. Like I'd think my parents were about to die every time they wanted to have a beer or something because of the shit that DARE was pumping into my brain

I think the green screen man was trying to tell us, “ Don’t do weed. Do acid”

I think people really underestimate what pizza is to a young person.

As someone who gained a lifetime appreciation for reading books thanks to my school bribing me with a free full pan pizza every so often for keeping up on my reading, _you might have a point about that pizza slice._

In first grade (before dare) we had a drug awareness class where we had to circle all the pictures of drugs, which of course had coffee. So I went home and told my parents they were on drugs and needed to stop. The school didn’t have anymore of those classes.

As someone who was in high school in the mid 00s, the best motivator to not do drugs was Lindsey Lohan's career.

It’s kinda weird how they constantly “DONT DO DRUGS DONT DO DRUGS JUST SAY NO!!!!!” What’s the thing that teenagers just love to do? Rebel, just teach them how to be safe

I had no exposure to drugs before DARE, i literally learned everything i knew about drugs from DARE at that time. After learning that if i did drugs i would literally die, and from the stress of school and being bullied every day i did drugs so i would die. But as you might imagine i didn't die but got insanely high instead, got attacked by a giant psychedelic rainbow number 8, and passed out on the kitchen floor for a couple hours. Only to be roused by my grandmother telling me to do that in my room instead because i was in the way of cooking dinner.

8:04 that conversation is like fully coherent. She wants to paint her room, doesn’t know if some third person will like that, but that her parents are okay with it.

I love that the cop who taught our DARE class always chain-smoked in his car after school in parking lot

D.A.R.E. basically Dared everyone to do drugs

3 years late but im still gonna tell my fav story. when I was in 5th grade my teacher decided to integrate our dare program with us learning how to do a 5 paragraph essay so we had to do an essay about why dare was good. I say miss teacher this is an argumentative essay right. she said yes. so i wrote a whole essay about how dare was bad and a waste of time when some people needed more time to focus on reading and math. when i handed it in my teacher was very politely trying not to laugh. she eventually turned to me and said thats a very good essay but im sorry we had a format we had to follow. i very sadly returned to my desk to rewrite propaganda for the cops

D.A.R.E is the reason I don’t do drugs. D - Drugs A - are R - really E - expensive

DARE had kids thinking that every time they walked down the street people would be offering them drugs left and right like it was candy

I remember, back in the 90's, that the DARE program was still going around in schools. Though, we didn't had to be bribed with bowling overnighters, we were being guilt tripped and scared by seeing pictures of lungs in horrible decay, meth teeth, and I think there was a medical dummy stand that showed the decaying organs that your body will 100% get if you take one ounce of drugs. During that time, the only fun thing I remember were the beer goggles. The ones that make you feel drunk. Those were fun. Everything else was pretty forgettable.

I remember going thru the DARE program in 6th grade. we had to sign a paper at the end promising we would never use drugs or alcohol. I wrote "I cannot promise I will never try drugs or alcohol in the future, but I learned some things from your classes." Sure enough age 17 comes around and I'm smoking pot, drinking beer, and doing mushrooms lol. However I can say the program definitely made me think about the consequences of drug abuse more and I never went overboard. So it wasn't a complete failure. We had guest speakers come in and talk about how they ruined their lives due to drug abuse. I don't know if DARE had such speakers nation wide, but it was certainly what impacted me the most.

You CANNOT convince me that green-screen monster man wasn't invented by someone high out of their mind

"Hey, wanna do drugs?" "No" "You sure man? They're fun" "Well I did say no.... and that's my last line of defense, didn't work... soooo... yeah sure gimme that heroin"

"Wow, Mike's good!" Also Mike: pops an extremely basic O ollie that literally every skateboarder learns.

Going through the DARE program after my mom having to advocate to keep the school from forcing me onto Ritalin in 1st grade should've felt more surreal, but at the time, it just felt redundant. "Drugs can alter your neurochemistry!" "Yeah, I know. I associate it with a horrifying loss of autonomy. But I guess I'll learn the factoids for a pencil, before braindumping them."

D.A.R.E. was very misleading. People don’t just offer up free drugs 🤷🏻‍♀️ I was very disappointed as I grew up and no one offered me free pot

I love how at 1:01 theirs just a dude and his girlfriend snorting coke on a public street bench in broad daylight

I went through D.A.R.E. twice because I moved. The second time, they showed us, as children, unedited self-inflicted shotgun wounds, car accidents with photos of victims and a guy that cut himself in half at the waist on a table saw on purpose. It was insane.

After one of the big DARE assemblies, a kid in my school went up to a cop and turned in his dad for smoking weed. The kid wasn't in my class, so I never did find out what became of that, but I remember feeling really bad for his dad.

"Go to country style donuts and buy the dare bear" sounds like it's a drug deal in itself.

the “don’t do drugs / don’t join gangs” song in the intermission bits has the same energy as the dobre brothers’ “stop that” song

I grew up during dare, everyone thought it was the lamest crap lol I only have fond memories of Scruff Mcgruff because after their presentations, they sent us all home with thick coupon books that had coupons like entire free meals or ice cream at restaurants, no purchase needed. As a poor kid, I always looked forward to them.

I think we can all agree: Lack of unlimited pizza after promising unlimited pizza is BULLSHIT.

My friend rolled her DARE certificate into a joint and smoked it. So poetic.

I’m 24 years old and up until today I thought D.A.R.E. Was a gorillaz album lmao

Dare was great: taught kids where to get drugs, how they were used, why they were used, what they did, potential side effects, how to identify drug abusers(who will give u drugs). What a stellar idea.

That DARE psa with the Fall Out Boy intro was actually perfect considering Pete Wentz nearly died of an Atavan overdose

At my school DARE said "kids don't huff paint and glue to get high" and half the kids in my grade were like "you can huff paint and glue to get high?" so you can imagine how that went. The art teacher had to keep all the rubber cement in a locked cabinet.

“Wanna feel good?” *pulls out fruit by the foot* 20 year old me: ”god do i.”

Dude, this unlocked a memory I was in grade 6 in 2011 and we made an anti-drug PSA and basically it was of 2 kids, giving another kid a bag of sugar which was supposed to be cocaine, and he just basically poured the bag into his mouth and ate it lol. So realistic

The DARE instructor at my sister’s school told all the kids how math was made, and unsurprisingly there was a seemingly overnight epidemic of math labs.

if you want to tell kids the dangers of drugs, dont bring a cop, bring an ex junkie.

Adults in the 00s be like: Don't do drugs. Doctors in the 00s be like: Oh, you sprained your thumb? Here's 90 Vicodins, take it 3x a day for a month.

I remember DARE but not much about it. The thing that made a bigger impression on me was a safety day camp thing and they had a whole section on electrical safety. They had a machine that would generate power line voltages and showed what it did to an uncooked hot dog. I was fascinated lol

-Don’t bring cops to tell people that drugs aren’t ‘cool’. -Peer pressure doesn’t just come from groups you’re outside of. Many kids get into drugs from their best friends. “Why would a friend offer me something that could hurt me?” -Telling kids about a bunch of drugs and how to do them is not a great way to keep kids from trying drugs.

I hate how they named it DARE like they were trying to make it cool

I've got a really cool 90's neon D.A.R.E fanny pack. All I use it for is to carry my drugs.

What’s funny is I actually learned more about drugs and why not to do them while I was a stripper than I ever did in school. If anything, the dare program confuse the crap out of me because I didn’t realize that certain drugs like alcohol and marijuana will not kill you if you have one hit. It actually gave me a very severe complex I didn’t drink or smoke, or do anything until I was over the age of 19. I’m actually habitual marijuana user now and I have a medical card because I use it for chronic pain and inflammation. It’s crazy, though I learn more about drugs when I was a dancer for sure. You would see girls who would get their entire lives thrown away in a few months to heroin or crack. They would literally do anything for these drugs, and it was so depressing and was a bigger Way for me to never want to do any of them. It was more effective than anything there could’ve ever showed me. I watch the reality is what happens when someone gets very very very addicted to heart substances and it’s absolutely terrifying. I’ll also add that these people were good people that were going through rough things in their lives and just made a wrong choice but it’s still to this day taking over a lot of their lives. The way there went about it was insulting and fear mongering if anything. I gave them no credit for the fact that I’m not a crackhead or a dope addict. I give that 100% to dancing. Because I have a very addictive personality, and I knew that if I ever got near those drugs, it would be over, but I knew that because I saw it happen to other people. If you really don’t want your kids to do drugs, you just need to be honest about the horrors of them. And you need to tell them the reason why people get to that point in their lives, and that there are different options for help instead of drugs. If we had a program like that, you probably actually would have a lot less drug addicts. It’s interesting though I have heard that Dare Failed miserably, and it’s really sad. Honestly because I have a lot of friends who have a lot of addictions to this day. I pray to God, her education systems got a little bit better at educating her to learn about things that they actually are going to need to know throughout life. Honestly, if it’s not, I’m homeschooling my daughter I could care less at this point I’m not letting her fall into the trap of being incredibly naïve and just thrown into the world like I was as a child.

So many bizarre memories... I'll share 2. One was a nightmare-fuel cartoon D.A.R.E video that featured a talking joint that must have been patterned off of Ursula the Sea Witch. Another memory is of my father ranting about how he had to go down to the school office and demand to know why I, at age 9, was coming home from school with a better understanding of the effects of different kinds of recreational drugs than on my times tables. That story resurfaces every so often, and the whole family still laughs at the absurdity of it.

Dude. Mike got free weed from acting like he don’t smoke.

Asking for the “D.A.R.E. Bear at Country Style Doughnuts” sounds like a code for buying drugs

One of my only D.A.R.E memories is of the teacher that they brought in making fun of me in class because he asked the class who cried before and didn't raise my hand (because I couldn't hear him). He made sure to bring it up everytime after that in some way.

Dare at my school was great. The adults explained the dangers of drugs in a very calm and informative manner.

We didn’t have Dare. We had this thing called “Dude, Be Nice” and it was an anti bullying thing. The students literally made fun of it so much that they stopped making us do it after the first semester

I've never seen a DARE shirt worn unironically.

I remember my D.A.R.E. coach, Officer Jones. He was cool. Sometimes I would come home from school and he'd be there talking to my mom. Usually when my dad was busy at work.

I love how Eddy just guarantees that kids will stop doing drugs if he gets the apology like he has been the mastermind behind all this ever since he was denied unlimited pizza and laser tag. The ultimate evil villain scheme.

Child: "I'm gonna smoke crack!" Adult: "Here, have more pizza!" Child: "OK I won't do drugs then"

The dare at my school compaired drugs to 9/11 “hijacking your brains like the terrorists hijacked the planes” it was not effective it was severely made fun of.

At my elementary school we had an afternoon every once in a while where DARE set up a bunch of info booths in front of the school and we all walked around them instead of being in class. The anti-tobacco stuff was good because they had models of what happened to your lungs/mouth but the other drugs were all about just saying no to peer pressure and nothing about any bad consequences of saying yes so there you go

my DARE instructor was a RCMP officer. I had an incident where she severely misunderstood my answer to a question and got pretty stern. It scared me to tears in front of the class because she had a holstered gun, in which my young naive mind thought she was going to threaten my life or otherwise put me in jail.. every time I shoot drugs up my arm i think of that

We all used to wear our D.A.R.E. shirts while toking down because we thought it was the height of wit and humor.

I had DARE in school and I ended up being a heroin addict. Btw I have 6 years clean now!

The cops that visited my school in 7th grade to talk to us kids about meth (because the neighborhood was notorious for meth labs). Cops didn't skimp out on showing us what you look like with prolonged use, what a lab looks like, and even how to spot one and report it. To this day, I've never done it and still remember what I learned that day (I'm 32). That was more impactful on me than the countless years DARE came to my school.

The county constable did the dare program in our district in Texas. He went on to be elected the county sheriff when I was in high school. He went on to be convicted of racketeering, extortion and drug trafficking and distribution.

DARE drug descriptions be like Meth: makes your teeth fall out Heroin: you could die Marijuana: you laugh a lot and food tastes better

my big gripe with dare is that they gave me a card when i graduated and swore ON THE BIBLE to me that I can use it to get a free small soda from mcdonalds for the REST OF MY LIFE and those fucking CHEAP CARNIES at mcdonalds started denying my card when I was 25. Thats fine. I guess I'll just go do drugs now since everything is a lie.

One time I was out in colorado and I had to get people to sign a petition to legalize medical mushrooms for my job, I found these D.A.R.E guys and they ended up signing it 😭

Number one lesson from DARE: telling kids not to do something will just make them want to do it out of spite.

why is mike like 32 and hanging out at the skate park with 12 year olds

Eddy: *exists* Eddy Burback: There can only be one.

I had DARE in the 5th grade. That summer, my family moved to a school district that did DARE in the 6th grade. I had to suffer through it twice.

I never did drugs (or smoked weed) not because of DARE, but because I was in like a bunch of different sports and clubs. The anti-smoking campaign had more of an impact on me because they showed the gorey details of what smoking does to your body.

one year after I graduated from dare, our dare leader was arrested for drinking and driving lmao.

7:12 I thought the girl was saying “gay” and not “game”, so when I saw that rainbow green screen monstrosity I thought that was what they were going for

I remember being taught what drugs were and their slang names in DARE. I wouldnt know anything about any drug without dare. Thanks for the lingo 😂 I also remember them trying to overdramatisize every drug as "do this and youll end up in prison or dead" We also had a conversation about gangs and i remember i didnt learn anything about actual gangs other than "this is why we cant wear hats at schools" And cool kids are going to bribe you with ___" Say "no" and be a nerd. 😂 sure.

The best drug education I ever receive came from simply talking to people who did/do those drugs and asking open and honest questions about their experience. The only time it didn’t make me not want to do them was with weed, which severely helped my anxiety for many years before a finally quit. Most of the time if you ask someone with experience about the negatives they won’t be shy to share them with you- unless they are a dealer who also happens to hate you they don’t want you getting into something you’re not comfortable with and bad trip.

the issue with dare is that they treated the program like a haunted hayride for weed. i didn't learn anything about the opioid epidemic through dare. i never learned how to spot a drug overdose through the dare program. all i learned is "ooga booga weed will melt your brain"

Nixon hated two things: The blacks and hippies. So he thought he could get rid of both with his war on drugs.

DARE taught me the drugs I wanted to try and use. Nothing about how to use them properly and not abuse them.

Most of what I remember about DARE was our local police officer just telling the most nutso stories while on the force. I mean some of them were drug related but I just remember learning alot of police junk like how tazers work, drug dogs, gun safety etc. Definetly not useless info in the slightest but also not remotely what the point of the program.

I remember the D.A.R.E. Program back in 5th grade in 1996. We were 100% clueless on drugs. They came in and taught us the names of all the drugs, the neighborhoods where to find the drugs and the code names to use to get the drugs from the drug dealers and they said “dOn’T dO dRuGs”

sorry dude i can’t do drugs i signed the contract that said i’d say no to drugs

I started high school in 1983 and so missed out on DARE. We did have someone come into the classroom in 4th grade or so who announced, “Statistically, 3 of you will use drugs,” which I believe was quite a lowball guess, and everybody started calling out specific names of who it was going to be. Then, because it was like 1978, they told us to shut up, and then started listing horrible ways to die. No songs, no parties, no potentially attractive descriptions of what the drugs did, just “This is how this one will kill you” plus various descriptions of marijuana destroying your brain so you would be an unemployable bum, you know, like all those traumatized Vietnam vets around town…Before that, I got the American Heart Association anti-smoking coloring book that had you color smokers’ lungs black and such things. I never had any interest in doing drugs, yay. And then in high school it was AIDS and constant terror of nuclear war. GenX is like this for a reason, guys.

We also have D.A.R.E down here in Brazil. Not only it introduced me to concept of drugs but it also gave me the statistics I needed for years later reach the conclusion that I should start smoking weed since I was already into alcohol.

E- eradicate D- dangerous D- drugs Y- y’all

This Video includes : D.A.R.E -10 % Eddie being salty about his childhood -90%

We didn’t have DARE at my school, but we were required to take a “health” class in middle school that was basically just “don’t do drugs or drink” and at one point we had to draw a paper out of a bowl to see what drug we had to make a presentation about and I got LSD and all that did was make me go “dang psychedelics seem pretty cool”. I had never considered doing drugs before that but that report made me kinda want to try it lol

I can still remember the chorus from the song we sang at our ceremony….which is pretty damn crazy since it was in 1995 or 96. D i won’t do drugs A won’t have an attitude R I will respect myself E i will educate me We had the most dope shirts though. Black with neon rainbow colors. Speaking as the runner up for my DARE essay, and as the one who would get so into it & volunteer for skits / quizzes (and mocked / made fun of) It doesn’t work. This is now the 13 years sober version of me; and there are definitely days, where I struggle a bit, but I think of all the friends I’ve lost because they OD…and my 11 year old daughter…and it keeps me going with wanting to remain sober.

"hey, u guys wanna feel good?" -said no drug dealer ever