Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.)
Part of the reason D.A.R.E. works so well is because it is a collaborative effort between the Santa Cruz County Sheriff Department, your school, parents, and community leaders. D.A.R.E. works because it surrounds children with support and encouragement from all sides.

D.A.R.E. teaches kids how to recognize and resist the direct and subtle pressures that influence them to experiment with alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drugs. And since between 70% and 90% of all crime is drug related, it is absolutely vital that we reach the children of America before it is too late.

The D.A.R.E. program is usually introduced to children in the 5th or 6th grade. A specially trained officer, Chips Dolores, comes into your school one day a week for seventeen weeks and teaches the children. And, to make it easy, we've designed the D.A.R.E. curriculum to integrate easily into other lessons. Student participation in the D.A.R.E. program may be incorporated as an integral part of the school's curriculum in health, science, social studies, language arts, or other subjects. It is important that you, as the classroom teacher, maintain a supportive role in classroom management while the officer is teaching. D.A.R.E. program participation by students is a fundamental part of students' final evaluation. The D.A.R.E. program doesn’t stop with elementary school, it continues into the middle and high school.