Your experience is clouded by either myopia or an inability to perceive nuance (or both). Yes, few drug users put things so simply as “don’t you want to be cool” but I have detected (and so have others in this thread) an unspoken assumption (for the most part. Sometimes the assumption is plainly spoken) that everybody does at least marijuana except for extreme squares. See Bird’s post above referring to all the lawyers and businessmen who he’s certain does coke all the time.
Seems the main people who are insulted by this clever ad are the drug users themselves - simply because it gives the perfect picture of what they look like to the rest of us. “We’re doing it to get high, stupid”. What’s that supposed to mean to us? All we see is a bunch of idiots engaged in pointlessly self-destructive and disgusting habits. That you’re doing so for the end of being idle and incoherent for a few moments doesn’t help your case either.
Sure, in a way it seems like it’s preaching to the choir, but that’s because we’re adults, we’ve already made our choices. But to kids to young to have gotten into drugs yet, it’s possible that they’d see that and think “Ha, that’s true - that is what those idiots look like”.
All right. All you slobs have your incisive, laser-focussed perception pointed at the wrong thing, as usual. Drug, schmug, Peer pressure, Schmeer pressure.
The important thing is that leeches are a gateway parasitic annelid, and kids who get hooked on them are much more likely to go on to Nematodes and worse. Only the self-deluded think it’s just an occasional fluke (Har!).
It’s easy to think you’ll do a few leeches and quit. Or, six months later, to rationalize a 7,000 calorie-per-day tapeworm habit. These are the kind of things past presidents and other esteemed men managed to live down, along with hookworm and pinworm and the occasional bout of elephantiasis. So only when you’re gobbling rancid meat and hanging out naked in stagnant ponds does it occur to you: “Gee, I might have a problem.”
Well, tough luck, you sickos: I’m voting for the law and order side this time around. The department of homeland security will start screening every checkpoint for blind, spineless enemies of the people, as soon as they figure out how to exclude themselves from the protocol.
I think part of that is happening in your own head, and part of it is due to your own imperception of nuance. In general it’s safe to say that people who haven’t tried marijuana in this day and age are probably very conservative or run in conservative circles, and it’s surprising to find people like that. That’s not peer pressure, that’s just God’s common sense. Nonetheless, it carries no judgement. Peer pressure would be trying to make someone feel inferior for being that sort of person. I think it’s passingly rare that a marijuana user try to make someone feel inferior for not being a smoker. In my observation those likely to judge someone for their choices are upstanding folks like yourselves, such as you did in your previous post. I also notice that such folks, for some bizarre reason, seem overly preoccupied with whether other people may be thinking they’re uncool. Again, all in your own head, dude.
A better commercial would have been to show all those people who have killed themselves with marijuana overdoses over the years… woops, there aren’t any. Oh well. I guess the leech thing is the best they could do.
Again, thanks. Myopia. Meeting one of the 53 percent of people who’ve never tried it (which is less relevant, IMHO, than measuring how many are or have been habitual users - plus I’m giving you the most generous stat) is surprising? Note that they’ve found no difference in usage between rural, suburban, or city dwellers, so don’t try to offer your location as any explanation.
The definition of peer pressure isn’t that narrow. It could simply mean promoting the idea that your behavior is the norm.
Of course not, they’d look silly since they know that if there had to be a fight, the non-users would easily have the moral highground, so they promote not being judgmental instead.
I just stated that there is peer pressure. That doesn’t mean I’m preoccupied with it. I’m not the one who started a defensive thread.
That’s just silly talk. The only reason someone might find that peer pressure is if it were very important that they consider themselves within the norm and others abnormal, which you are repeatedly demonstrating. If I’m outside the norm I shrug it off and say “vive la difference”, you scramble for facts and figures to show that you’re normal and I’m the freak. I’m sorry it seems to matter so much to you.
No, actually, ‘peer pressure’ is about being considered a member of the group; not an outcast. If you don’t look, act, and do like ‘the gang’, you bet your butt you can be ostracized, particularly if you’re still in school. And that’s big to kids. In fact, from one study :
(my bold).
And here’sthreemore
demonstrating how peer pressure is indeed important in drug use. So I’m all happy for the folks who step up to say peer pressure didn’t influence them, but they don’t represent the majority, I daresay.
Well, if someone says “I’m more moral than you because I don’t do drugs”, you would probably collapse in giggling fits on the carpet and be unable to mount an effective response. That’s my achilles heel in the culture wars.