Reminds me of an old thread where someone wanted to define pop music as only songs that have been in the top 40, because, you know, they had to be popular 
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You’ve obviously never worked any place where people have to leave the premises - not just the building, but the property itself - to smoke, and they were allowed to do so.
Yep, my old hospital, and they caved to those workers’ demands. No matter how busy we were, if it was their break times, they left. 
When I was in pharmacy school in the early 1990s, some of my classmates did a program called "Katy’s Kids (which included a volunteer who wore a kangaroo suit) at local elementary schools about how there are good drugs and bad drugs. DARE and other worthless programs had some kids who refused to take medication for things like asthma and epilpsy because it was, well, drugs.
One of my colleagues said that she had done a presentation at her kids’ school about something similar, and in her case, she explained the difference between drugs, medicine, and poison.
Exactly. Calling everything by the same word (drugs) can be confusing to people who don’t understand the difference between medicine and poison. Fentanyl can kill you or it can be a great pain relief, depending on the source. The problem when you tell kids drugs are bad is they see the hypocrisy right away. And so being “under the influence” of drugs is A similarly loaded message, especially when there is a blood alcohol limit for things like alcohol. Drinking the point of impairment is dangerous. And illegal if you’re planning to drive.
Uh huh. I think you might want to re-examine this statement. Not all recreational drugs are bad or illegal (pot is perfectly legal where I live) and medical drugs can also be abused. Drugs are chemical substances that can be helpful, harmful or both. It’s not about good and bad.
Not that I’m aware. A few other kinds of shenanigans went on at my school, but not drink or drug related.
I was completely ignorant of drugs when I was a kid, they just weren’t a thing in my circle. I’m still pretty naive about them, subsequently.
I agree. When my daughter came home from school eager to tell me that DRUGS ARE BAD, I sat down with her and talked about antibiotics, insulin, etc. I wanted her to understand, not just parrot back slogans.
What I never thought of was her going to school the next day, raising her hand, and explaining to the teacher and class that not all drugs are bad.
The teacher contacted me and explained why they taught the way they did. I stood up for drugs. We agreed to disagree, but the teacher wasn’t pleased.
I feel that is self-evident to most people, especially here. I haven’t really heard “say no to drugs” since the 80s/90s. Recreational pot is legal here, and most folks know about the dangers of prescription drugs like opiods and benzos (in fact, a post suggests a teacher being under the influence of oxycodone.) The OP was pretty well understood by me.
This is important.
Teachers, especially high school teachers, are probably plagued by false rumors started by pissed-off students more than in any other employment category that exists.
Oh gosh, yes. We had a teacher in middle school that we made rumors of in-school drinking about just because he was weird and spacey.
As a weird and spacey adult (who doesn’t drink on the job), I now take umbrage to my middle school self 
Awesome!
I hope so. Otherwise WTF?!
I had a teacher in high school who everyone believed was on meth or something similar. She tried to be the “young and hip” teacher despite being in her 40s dressing up like somebody still in their 20s and acting “laid-back” but she would randomly have bizarre bits of anger and paranoia in class. She would literally in the middle of the class claim somebody said something under their breath when it had been dead silent and once tried to get a student suspended for calling her a “worthless bitch” when everyone who was there vouched for him he didn’t actually say anything. People think it was drugs because it would only happen after lunch and she would always have her lunch in her car in the parking lot and exclusively after that she would be insanely angry/paranoid.
Chemistry teacher, junior year of high school in the late 1980s. Slurred speech, the alcohol smell, couldn’t have been more obvious. The coup de grace was one of my classmates finding her bottle of Wild Irish Rose in the closet, right behind the Bunsen burners and test tubes.
Nothing ever came of that discovery. I think the teacher was out of the room for a spell, because I recall the bottle being shown off a bit to others in the class. I also recall that the teacher did eventually learn that her stash was found … but naturally she couldn’t do anything about it via official school discipline.