I had mixed emotions earlier this week when I read that the resource officer at Hopkins Schools was teaching fifth-graders to identify and resist bullying.

There is no question that the problem of bullying needs to be addressed, especially as children start preparing for middle school. But I fear we as a society somehow have failed in our heroic efforts to stop kids from taking drugs and alcohol, from having unprotected premarital sex, and yes, from engaging of enabling bullying.

This is purely a case of noble intentions, solid efforts, but less than satisfactory results.

It was about 20 years ago that I finally started to read about how the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program just hasn’t produced the results we have sought. Researchers said DARE may have delayed, but it did not stop kids from taking drugs or trying alcohol.

I remember taking many pictures of proud police officers showing off their harvests of illegal marijuana to make of safer.

I even personally know a child who as a sixth-grader won a DARE essay contest and he used to go around chanting, “No, No, No I say… I won’t do drugs, no way!” Yet by the time he was a junior in high school, he was regularly doing marijuana and occasionally alcohol.

We American parents, school and police officials lied to the kids for too long about marijuana. We used to tell horror stories, perhaps taken from “Reefer Madness” and “Dragnet,” to try to scare young people away from pot. Yet I personally tried pot at the tender age of 19 and came away with the reaction, “Oh, I see… They lied to me.”
The real problem here is that there are other drugs far worse that should indeed be avoided. But would the kids believe the adults who had lied to them about weed?

Not long ago, I came across a religious-based program implemented at Delton schools called “True Love Waits,” coordinated by a hip minister who said of homosexuals, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” It turns out that his elaborate ring ceremonies of promises from girls to save themselves until marriage may only have delayed sexual activity. The vast majority of these promise makers did not marry as virgins.

It seems to me that the good intentions by religious officials, parents and school personnel just haven’t produced the results we wanted. It’s almost as if all these teachings and encouragement really didn’t have much effect. That is, DARE and “True Love Waits” have been about as successful as Prohibition was from a century ago.

And now I fear that the proximity and tremendous availability of gambling will only make these things worse, mostly because of the marketing and advertising that accompanies it.

To be sure, there will be some young people who will resist these temptations and potential addictions, but there’s a lot of truth in the notion that morality cannot be legislated. Even more important a factor is that marketing and advertising too often target unwary consumers’ weaknesses and exploits them for money.

Whenever I think of “We’re going there in a hand basket, I often cite this as the reason why.