Minnesota's D.A.R.E. Program To Pivot From Drugs to Cyberbullying

Remember the D.A.R.E. program in school? We were never ever ever ever ever ever gonna do drugs, because the lion in a t-shirt (and NO PANTS) told us not to and to also snitch on our parents if we caught them doing drugs, whether it was recreational drugs or prescription drugs. We didn't know the difference, we just saw "drugs" and snitched.

Good times. Well, D.A.R.E. is rebranding/pivoting from drugs (it's right there in their name, tho) to peer pressure and cyberbullying education...which isn't a bad thing, I just hope it goes better than the drug thing.

Hennepin County D.A.R.E. Program Revamped to Focus on Cyberbullying

I seriously hope this goes better than the anti-drug program.

Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt says, "...with everything that we see that’s going on [...] we know that there are people out there that are preying on the vulnerabilities that our young people have."

Witt says over 450 students have graduated from the program so far.

Why I'm Worried About This Program

Back in the late 1900s, "D.A.R.E. To Keep Kids Off Drugs" became the unofficial slogan of...drug users and counterculture folks. The logo and acronym may accidentally suggest experimenting with drugs (because reading comprehension has never been our forte).

Even the D.A.R.E. program itself admitted: "[R]esearch has found that teaching children about drugs with which they have never heard of or have no real life understanding may stimulate their interest or curiosity about the substance."

This country, I swear to Lemmy...

"You rang?!" (Getty Images)