JUST SAY LIFE SKILLS

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

The two eighth-graders in a classroom in New York City's Spanish Harlem can barely suppress their giggles. "You are sitting on a stalled, crowded bus," their teacher tells them. "Start up a conversation." Esther, petite and pony-tailed, begins. "Well, this bus is really crowded!" "Yeah," says Luis. "I can't wait to get outta here--I'm gonna suffocate." Pause. Esther: "Nice day, isn't it? Where are you going?" Luis: "To take my girlfriend to the movies." Esther: "I have a date too." Painful pause. Luis: "The bus is certainly...stopped." The class cracks up, and the two scamper back to their desks.

Hard as it may be to believe, the forced dialogue in this classroom, part of a program called Life Skills Training, may help address a stinging question posed during the 1996 presidential campaign. When Bob Dole belabored Bill Clinton over a rise in youth drug use, the numbers supported him: a University of Michigan study shows that in 1995, 16% of eighth-graders had used marijuana and 2.6% cocaine. Figures for 12th-graders were 35% and 4%; all were significant jumps over 1991 rates (though far below rates in the late 1970s).

In fact, there is even worse news. Recent reports suggest that D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), the antidrug program installed in nearly 80% of America's school districts, has failed to prove itself effective. Originated in Los Angeles in 1983 under the administration of Daryl F. Gates, who was then police chief, D.A.R.E. sends police into the schools to present 17 sessions on specific drugs, resisting peer pressure and like topics, sometimes using an array of "D.A.R.E.-ephernalia," from charts and bumper stickers to T shirts and talking robots.

Parents are thrilled to see their children exposed to uniformed role models; the constabulary relishes the priceless publicity. And thanks to an approximately $500 million federal subsidy written into the 1989 Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, D.A.R.E. is cost free at the local level. The only problem, according to a study just completed by Richard R. Clayton, director of the Center for Prevention Research at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, is that, as Clayton says, "D.A.R.E. did not have any sustained effect on anything." A rating of D.A.R.E. by Drug Strategies, a respected Washington research group, arrived at the same conclusion, as has police chief Norm Stamper of Seattle, which may drop the program. For all its popularity, says Stamper, D.A.R.E. "does not make much of a dent in drug use when the kids get older."

By contrast, several rigorous evaluations have shown Life Skills to reduce the rate of teen drug use. Designed to combat teen smoking, it is a series of role-playing and problem-solving exercises with not even a mention of marijuana until lesson No. 3. "The idea is to present drug resistance in a large context of social skills kids need to navigate the minefield of adolescence," says Gilbert Botvin, director of Cornell University's Institute for Prevention Research, who developed Life Skills based on behavioral data about teens.

Rather than police officers--who represent authority to an age group just beginning to challenge that--homeroom teachers and peers teach Life Skills. In place of long-term harm, which adolescents do not take seriously, it focuses on the immediate adverse effects of drugs. The 15 sessions of improvisation and discussion are meant to make students more confident, more assertive and more discerning about the messages they get from pop culture and from classmates. It appears to work: 4,446 Newark, New Jersey, seventh-graders in a Life Skills program tracked through graduation engaged in only half the drug, tobacco and alcohol use of their un-Skilled contemporaries.

Such successes have remained unsung, however, in the face of D.A.R.E.'s overwhelming hegemony. Last month, for instance, New York City signed on to D.A.R.E. at an estimated cost of $8.8 million. Even though Life Skills has been tested in 50 New York schools over the decade, police commissioner Howard Safir said he had never heard of it. Meanwhile, Glenn Levant, head of D.A.R.E. America, dismisses his program's negative evaluations: "Just because someone publishes a paper and calls it a study does not really mean anything, particularly when you're dealing with something as subjective as whether prevention works," he says. "Only in America do you get kicked for doing good work."

Nonetheless, Levant met with Botvin several weeks ago to discuss the professor's ideas. Combining D.A.R.E.'s marketing prowess with Life Skills' apparent effectiveness might eliminate one campaign issue in the year 2000.

--Reported by William Dowell/New York

With reporting by WILLIAM DOWELL/NEW YORK