DARE's rapid growth has meant that individuals and organizations have developed strong vested interests in its continued existence. Consider some of the individual and organizational stakeholders with important ties to DARE. For individual police officers who have grown weary of the streets, burglary detecting, or vice, DARE provides a pleasant alternative that permits and encourages development of strong ties with children. For stakeholders organizations such as local school boards and sponsoring corporations, DARE is tangible proof that each is doing something about drugs. DARE specifically allows stakeholders organizations to demonstrate their commitment to law enforcement, children, and the War on Drugs. While not quite the flag, Mom, and apple pie, DARE is very close. Because all organizations seek positive reputations and publicity and because DARE is a strong source of both, stakeholder organizations understandably see DARE as a reputation and publicity machine to be firmly embraced and not carelessly frittered away. Millions of students have been exposed to it. The only problem, according to numerous of studies on the program is that DARE does not work. DARE is the legacy of former Los Angeles police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who expresses most disbelief at the near biblical spread of his creation (Buzz 1995). Gates was a troubled parent (Lundman 2001). His son was addicted to drugs and in frequent trouble with the law (Lundman 2001). Starting in 1983, Chief Gates began to try to do for the children of Los Angeles what he had been unable to do for his own son, keep them off drugs and the very real criminal problems drugs can use (Lundman 2001). Gates started the program with ten DARE officers working in fifty L.A. city schools; today the .
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organization claims to have trained over 20,000 officers who are teaching it in fully two-thirds of the nation's school districts (Buzz 1995).
