Is DDR taking over your squadron?

[DC]

At our squadron we do DDR. We take about 30 minutes and talk about drugs. We brought in a drug sniffing dog, from the Sherriffs Department. That was fun. DDR is important.

30 minutes a week, month, quarter, what?

I still think that even taking 30 minutes a month is taking away time that my cadets could spend doing something more productive and directly related to the cadet program..

[ThorntonOL]

It's not taking too much away from my unit, otherwise it's just a cadet commander's activity which occasionally is pretty good, but we've had times where we could have used the time a bit more wisely. With the lesson plans that National provides I already know what six I will be giving this year during the scheduled times and wish I had scheduled another two half hour sessions, oh well gonna have them ready for when the scheduled class teacher is a no show. (Happens occasionally.) I took it up because I wanted something to do other than sit around all night being lazy, (that is until we get new members or someone forgot to order their freebie uniform or just didn't know how and didn't bother to ask anyone, currently have a few who I have to order for.)

[TEAM SURGE]

At our squadron we do DDR. We take about 30 minutes and talk about drugs. We brought in a drug sniffing dog, from the Sherriffs Department. That was fun. DDR is important.

30 minutes a week, month, quarter, what?

I still think that even taking 30 minutes a month is taking away time that my cadets could spend doing something more productive and directly related to the cadet program..

I don't think it is taking too much time. We do about 30 minutes a month. How is possibly driving a kid from doing drugs not productive? At our squardon we had a cadet who is in jail now because of drugs. Then we did not have DDR. I believe it is something that helps contribute. We also have a couple former cadets who do drugs. i think DDR could have done them a bit to.

[RiverAux]

I haven't said it in this thread but may have elsewhere -- the CAP DDR program is crying out for a real evaluation of its effectiveness.  Do cadets in squadrons with active DDR programs have lower rates of abuse than those that don't have active DDR programs?  Are the rates lower in communities with CAP DDR programs than those that don't? 

If the answer is yes there would be some evidence that the DDR program is correlated with less drug use even though causal evidence might not be available.  But, if we can't find at least find a correlation in the DDR program and less drug abuse, the program should be dropped. 

[DC]

I haven't said it in this thread but may have elsewhere -- the CAP DDR program is crying out for a real evaluation of its effectiveness.  Do cadets in squadrons with active DDR programs have lower rates of abuse than those that don't have active DDR programs?  Are the rates lower in communities with CAP DDR programs than those that don't? 

If the answer is yes there would be some evidence that the DDR program is correlated with less drug use even though causal evidence might not be available.  But, if we can't find at least find a correlation in the DDR program and less drug abuse, the program should be dropped. 

Sounds like a lovely idea, but how would you obtain meaningful data for such a survey?

There are probably a lot more people doing drugs than people that are known to do drugs by others, and how many CAP cadets that use are going to admit it, even in an anonymous survey (that wouldn't really be that anonymous, because it would identify what unit said cadet was from, which could potentially make identifying them rather easy, generally a good thing, but bad for the survey...)

[RiverAux]

There are quite a few different ways that this sort of thing could be done.  Just one example would be for NHQ to mail out surveys to a few thousand cadets in the two categories of units (DDR/non-DDR) along with a stamped return envelope in which the cadet could return the anonymous survey.  Considering we spend half a million a year specifically on this program, the costs to do such a survey would be pretty minor, especially if we figured out the entire program is a waste of time.

Judging by news reports when various surveys about drug use among children come out, it doesn't appear that they are all that shy about self-reporting themselves in anonymous surveys.   

I'm not against the program, just skeptical and would like to see some proof that it works. 

[Ned]

I'm not against the program, just skeptical and would like to see some proof that it works. 

While I support only using "evidence-based practices" in things like this, it is worth noting that very few drug treatment / demand reduction programs in the civilian world are evaluated for effectiveness using any kind of objective criteria, either.

As for DDR, as long as our USAF partners believe that it is an effective use of their money and resources, who are we to disagree?

[jimmydeanno]

It seems that there appears to be a skew to the negative side regarding our current DDR program.  I notice that the majority of the comments (including mine) contain comments like, "We have better things to do with out time." "It's not taking away too much from my unit.", etc.

It doesn't seem that anyone can really point to the program and say, "This is having an effect on my cadets and I can say that it is an important part of our program."

After mulling this situation over the last few days, I think that I would lean more towards making the DDR program more of an external program, where CAP hosts activities, provides information, etc for the youth in their local community (schools, community centers, etc).

Unfortunately, I think that we [CAP] has a bad habit of making "external" equal "non-existant." 

By moving the program to be external, I think it would better align our program to the Air Force's objectives, and provide a better community relationship with our units.  These events and such could be tied in with regularly scheduled events like red ribbon week.

[A.Member]

DDR?  Virtually non-existant.  And I'm OK with that.

[TEAM SURGE]

You guys are haters! Fo REAL!