Doyle leaves the decision of DARE training up to each individual school in the district. Although two elementary schools still teach the program, Doyle said he lets his administrators know his opinion of it. In fact, he said it was his opinion that led to West Hills Middle School's decision to pull out of DARE last year. They bring the police officer in, he tells them the law, he tells them drugs are bad, don't do them. But it just doesn't work that way.
Drug prevention is much more complex.
Several other Metro Detroit districts also have pulled out of DARE after many years. Oxford Area Community Schools, for instance, taught DARE for a number of years, but dropped it this year. Time constraints and duplication of material from other courses were among the deciding factors. Harper Woods was one of Michigan's first DARE districts, during the 1980s, according to Police Chief Larry Semple. But he decided to eliminate the program in 1996 because the department didn't have enough manpower to cover essential police work, such as traffic enforcement and criminal investigation, to justify the amount of time the program required.