Pitting the latest antidrug.com ad

The BBQ Pit
21

Can I add a “Fuckin’ A” to that?

You would not believe the bullshit that the school’s D.A.R.E. program was spoon-feeding my kid back in, oh, fifth grade or so. I didn’t realize how bad it was until we were at a party and she saw me having a beer. “Well, that’s just great,” she said to me, “How are we going to get home now?”

“What? It’s a beer. Take it easy.”

“You can’t drive after you have a beer. You’re going to be drunk.”

I went to the school the following Monday to have a look at the “course” materials and was mighty surprised at the sheer volume of half-truths, bent statistics, and outright lies they were feeding the kids. She had another three years of D.A.R.E. to go and I spent those three years combatting their propaganda with commonsense advice and lots of “so, what did the D.A.R.E. officer have to say today, dear?”

We may not see exactly eye to eye on this, Finn, but we’ve got more common ground than you think. Because it’s only a matter of time before the kids discover that the panicy prohibition-oriented crap being pumped at them is a basketful of lies, and once they do they’re not going to believe a word we tell them when something really dangerous comes along.

I’m not sure it should be that. As parents, we really do (and should) want to set some limits on our kids’ behavior, if only in an attempt to spare them from making some of the stupider mistakes we made (shit, they’ll still make plenty of mistakes on their own. We did.) But I can’t be the only parent that sees the ad as a positive thing, a way to get parents more involved in their kid’s lives and maybe chat with them about what they can expect from those sweet buds nestled in that baggie. That might even be one of the best ironies about those ads - parents who know that education works a hell of a lot better than prohibition.

22

Wrong - yes. Stupid - yes. Mixing any drug with another without careful consideration of the interaction is stupid. I would be glad to consider any workable way of differentiating responsible adults from irresponsible kids that doesn’t involve age. Is age an arbitrary cut-off? You bet. Find me one that works that isn’t arbitrary.

Drugs kill, or haven’t you noticed? I’ve buried more friends who overdosed, mixed drugs and alcohol, got involved with meth and got murdered for it than any 4 people I know. Pardon me if I have a rather hard-nosed attitude towards illegal drug use.

Remember the last paragragh of the OP:

Buying your kid weed isn’t doing anybody any good. If you can’t be a good example, then at least try not to be a bad one.

23

Someone did get hurt. The girl passed out. Passing out is not an okay thing. Attitudes like that are unhealthy. If someone did pass out, you should call the paramedics.

24

Yeah, we lose people to alcohol poisoning pretty regularly. If not the direct toxicity of BACs in the 0.4 range in novice drinkers, then from the vomiting and aspirating the vomitus that comes with passing out. I’ve seen enough of both of those from my ER days.

Drinking/drugging until one passes out is inherently dangerous. Just because some of us did it and got away with it doesn’t make it acceptable behavior.

25

You’ve been listening to my cat when she’s on catnip, haven’t you?:slight_smile:

“Dude, have you ever LOOKED at your paws? I mean, REALLY looked at your paws? Duuuuuuuuuude. Can I have some treats? The whole bag?”

:smiley:

And pot was only a party drug if it was available at parties for my friends and I in our younger days. Most of the time it was a “Let’s get stoned and watch really bad movies.”.

I saw the second Star Wars movie completely stoned, and it vastly improved the first half of the movie (the second half was even better because I was asleep).

Honestly, I hate these anti-drug commercials. I’m going to teach my kids to be responsible for their actions. I will not go nuts if they smoke a little pot once in awhile, but again, if they aren’t responsible about it, that’s their own fault.

E.

26

:confused: Then she’s hanging out with the wrong crowd. In my experience, girl passed out on couch doesn’t mean drag her upstairs and run a train on her. Person (guy, girl, whoever) passed out on couch means walk over, wake them up, see just how drunk the person is (like, do we need to call an ambulance), and make sure they don’t go back to sleep so they don’t choke on their vomit. Or course, everybody tries to watch out for everyone so that they don’t reach that state.

27

Rule 1: The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or God help you.

Rule 2: There is nooooo Rule 2!

Saw it myself. Kids lied to about pot, smoked pot, and then made a most unfortunate presumption: if they lied about this, they lied about all the rest. If you don’t know enough about drugs to tell them the truth, then tell them what I’m telling you.

Opiates are for pain. If you don’t have pain, you don’t need opiates. If you experiment with opiates and find them very appealing, you probably have a deficiency in endorphins such that minor pains that most of us experience as “background noise” trouble you. Addressing the general “wholesomeness” of your overall condition is a better option.

Pot is milk and cookies.

Methedrine is an evil chemical cooked up by Nazi scientists under the direct guidance of Darth Satan. It rots the brain, the teeth and the soul with stunning rapacity. If you try meth and you like meth, don’t ever ever touch it again.

LSD is pretty cool for about half an hour or so, but it lingers. Myself, I like a drug that will sit and visit for a while, then go away. Most peoples first experience with LSD is a humdinger, and they try it again hoping to repeat. They almost never do. It took me more than a hundred repititions before I figured that out, but I’m not what you call a “quick study”.

LSD is also a “pretentious” drug, you keep getting the feeling you are learning something profound. Maybe you are, but probably not. It may provoke a “spark”, an insight to consider under sober circumstances, but so will poetry. Acid also mimics adrenaline hence the “shivers”. Rarely, but unpredicatably, this can lead to a sense of panic based on nothing whatever, which is the true derivation of the term “bummer”. Always have a calmative agent available: chamomile tea, valium, ball peen hammer.

'shrooms are delightful, a blessing from a wise and benign Goddess. Be wise and benign in its use, or you will piss Her off. Don’t.

Booze is for chumps. Booze has killed some of the best people I ever met, more than all the other drugs combined, by a factor of ten. Booze lies. You think you’re OK to drive, 99 times out of a hundred you are, and then somebody pays. If you can get home without risk, then go ahead and get stupid.

Meth really stinks. I know, I said that already. But meth really stinks. You can’t get benzedrine any more, which is kind of a shame, because it provokes people to be uncommonly friendly and nice. No idea why. Main downside is a tendency to make bad jazz seem complex and interesting.

DMT is no more. Good riddance. Never had XTC, not about to, dance like a white boy anyway. Cocaine does almost nothing to me or for me, so I pass.

Here endeth the lesson.

28

I’d readily agree. I think we have a bit of divergence on how we read the commercial.

Of course. I’m not advocating that we let kids run totally wild, but setting reasonable limits seems to make much more sense to me.

Probably not… but I still think that the ad campaign’s purpose is to eliminate drug use, not argue for better communication and safer drug use.

Heavens forfend that they mix pot with alcohol because then they’ll be… drunk… and… um… stoned. Won’t someone think of the children?!?

Here’s a way that’s not arbitrary: As long as you’re not putting your life/health in danger or the lives/health of people around you, go nuts.

Drugs are bad, mmmmkay?
It’s virtually impossible to OD on pot.

If your worry is unsafe behavior while on pot, teach your kids not to drive or accept a ride from anybody who’s high. Tell them that you’ll be happy to pick them up, even if it’s four in the morning, without a single judgemental word.

And just think, if they’d stuck with pot they’d probably be alive today. Maybe telling them that pot is just as bad as any other drug, ya know, isn’t a good idea?

Why, exactly, would that be wrong?

No.

Ayieeeeeeee!!!

You must be great fun at parties.
But you’re right, it’s not okay at all. Why, you might wake up with… a hangover! Countless civilizations have fallen due to having a hangover. It’s probably the worst thing in the entire world.

Hey, if you’re tired, you get a bit tipsy, and feel like crashing? Great! Don’t drive a car. Find a comfy spot, and bed down for the night. Sounds like some responsible drug use to me.

Attitudes like yours.
Kids will do drugs. Kids will drink. No matter how much you want them not to. We can either arm them with facts, or try to scare them with bullshit. But woe unto them and their parents when they realize it’s bullshit.

Jeez… I’m very glad you were nowhere near me during college.

Can I get some clarification here? Are you saying that any use of alcohol or marijuana which causes you to become very tired and go to sleep is a bad thing, or merely that being too drunk to remain conscious can be dangerous? What of the difference between being tired and a bit stoned/tipsy and going to sleep, and blacking out because you can no longer remain conscious? Hell, after having three or four beers in an evening I can easily pass out if it’s late and I let my eyes close. Is that a health risk? If so, is it an unnaceptable health risk?

Might your sample be biased because you see only the people who come into the ER, and not the millions upon millions who are just fine and don’t need medical attention? If the majority of people can use these substances and not land in the ER, doesn’t that refute the claim that they are inherently dangerous?

Each year many people choke to death on food. Is steak inherently dangerous?

29

Red meat gives you cancer of the asshole, or “O’Reilly Syndrome”. So, yes.

30

Elucidator just elucidated drugs about as well as I’ve ever heard anyone do it. Very good post.

31

Ingesting anything to the extent that unconsciousness results is unsafe. Far more unsafe than the risk of eating and choking. That’s why anesthesiologists make $400k a year (and pay over $100k in malpractice insurance) to make people unconscious and then wake them up again. Safely.

Note that I’m not talking about getting sleepy, nodding off, just going to bed to sleep it off, etc. “Gee, I had a beer or six, so I’m gonna head to bed early” is not the situation I’m addressing. If a person cannot be awakened by another person, they’re not asleep, they’re unconscious. And at a significant risk for respiratory distress.

32

[

](http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CXH/is_1_27/ai_112937520)

[

](http://www.stjohnsmercy.org/healthinfo/adult/nontrauma/choke.asp)

Now, this is not to say that long term abuse of alcohol does not lead to deaths. it obviously does. However, does this not point to the fact that the drug/food itself is not a problem, but how it is used is?

Food for thought. Please remember to cut it into small bites and chew properly

33

At the very minimum, because you don’t really give a shit, roll them over on thier stomachs so that puking isn’t fatal. Doug “The Dog”, rock singer extraordinaire, RIP.

34

There is a world of difference between going to sleep and puking then passing out. A person that is puking then passes out is in real danger of either dying from alcohol poisoning outright or choking to death on their puke. If your teenager (assuming like 14-16) does go to a party and pukes then passes out on a couch a parent certainly needs to make sure that their child understands the risks associated with partying. This actually sounds like the only anti-drug commercial that I have seen (I haven’t seen this one) that makes a lick of sense.

35

Just wanted to point this out, as I clears up any confusion I was having. I’ve seen more than one person get tired from drinking beer but not be unconscious. In my peer group, the lingo for that is “Man, I’m gonna go pass out now.”

Someone who’s fucked themselves into a state of unconsciousness is a far different matter.

36

I think being “puking drunk” is the relative clue here. Puking is the body’s natural response to ingesting too much alcohol. If the girl was puking, chances are she wasn’t just tired.

37

Yeah, but I don’t have a copy of the ad in front of me, and when I saw it, I got the impression that there was a significant time lag between when she puked and when she went to sleep on the couch. I still think that ad is mostly scare tactics and is not devoted to safe drug use, but non-drug use.

It’s the analog of abstinance only education.

38

True. But I’ve seen people puke off of a beer or two. Hardly enough to really consider them in any dangerous territory.

39

Meh. I just can’t get worked up over this one. It’s nowhere near the classic glory of:
(Visual): egg in shell (Voiceover): “This is your brain.”
(Visual): egg splats into frying pan. (Voiceover): “This is your brain on drugs!”

Good times. It was a like mini drivers’ ed movie (“PROM OF DEATH”).

Kids firmly believe they’re immortal. They don’t think it intellectually, but thinking doesn’t feature prominently. They’re bags of raging hormones, arrogance, innocence, hope and insecurity. It’s a horrible–and wonderful–time of life, and one I wouldn’t re-live for the world. It’s a miracle I survived even half of the stupid things I did, all of which seemed entirely within my control at the time.

The ad isn’t great, but at least it leaves a door open for parents to start from their own perspective. And face it: these ads aren’t aimed at kids. I give this one props for at least avoiding overt, scripted idiocies. “Drugs and alchohol will kill you. Not the beer in the fridge. That’s…different.”

Doesn’t register on my outrage meter.

40

Damn, I loved those old drivers’ ed movies. They were so damn outdated, but there was something, I dunno, cool about seeing a 1938 Chevy sedan delivery plumber’s wagon jammed into a boulder, with the pipes coming out the windshield on the driver’s side…

And, can I have my brain with sausage and homefries on the side?