Due to budget cutbacks and nationwide criticism of the program’s effectiveness, Anne Arundel County in Maryland has ended its Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program.  The program, participated in by more than 24,000 Maryland students this year, was the state's largest anti-drug program.

Lt. Jason D. Little, the Police Department representative who oversees the DARE unit, told the Baltimore Sun, “It would make me sad if we were stopping DARE knowing that it was really making a difference to the kids in it.  But it’s not.”

While a number of parents are unhappy to see the program go, recent studies, including a 2003 U.S. General Accounting Office report, find the program to be highly unsuccessful in combating drug use.  Such studies have called the program’s long-term influence “statistically insignificant.”

Anne Arundel County’s decision to end the program exemplifies a growing consensus that the DARE program is out-dated and prohibitionist.