I remember the DARE program in my school. Did jack-all to prevent kids from smoking, drinking, or doing drugs. I recall we had T-shirts, occasional meetings about I don’t even remember what, and we went to a conference in the city where I learned, among other things, that pentacles were sure signs of satanic activity. :rolleyes:
The most information we got out of the people in charge was “Drugs are bad and you shouldn’t use them.” No actual information, just a value judgment.
[QUOTE=SnakeSpirit]
Well, they lied to me about marijuana, so they’re probably lying about heroin, too!
So, as a young experimenter, you take the drug, and realize that it’s nothing like what you were warned against. At that moment you realize adults have been lying to you, and you also realize that drugs are FUN, and at the same time you get social benefits for being someone willing to stand up and be yourself., i.e. your friends think you are cool.
Drug use is a rite of passage in a large chunk of our society (unintentional as it is), and it’s foolish to ignore that, or to try and criminalize the normal behavior of our middle class youth.
Of all of the LSD me and my friends, my fraternity brothers, and all the rest, I only knew 1 guy who ended up working in that homemade dress at a convenience store with a shaved head and the belief that oranges were God. So 1/500th chance of insanity versus social acceptance. That’s the math.
Are you saying that ingestion of LSD and the like is a prerequisite for social acceptance? :eek:
If so, you’re welcome to it. Given the choices I would prefer social isolation.
No, I don’t. I remembered Bill Stout’s commentary and I thought this acerbic statement on drugs–in reference to John Belushi, and to his widow’s brainless remark–might perhaps be received more seriously from posters who had it in their craw that the discussions on Dragnet were “hilarious.”
What’s brainless about her remark? Obviously, drugs can be fun, else no one would do them. From googling, it seems her husband died of an overdose on a combination of cocaine/heroin. That’s more a direct result of prohibition (unknown and varying dosages, adulterants) than the drugs themselves.
If you wish to debate about drugs and drug-policy, I (and some others) are ready to do so, but this is not the right thread for it. Open a new thread in Great Debates or IMHO or the Pit.
You revived this thread. You start a new one. I’ve have already said my piece on drug policies within various other threads. You seem to be the one with a need to prove something, given that you revived a thread after 7 weeks.
That’s one of the things that really turned me off about DARE. Even as a 5th or 6th grade student, I knew there had to be some reason people actually used drugs other than the dreaded “peer pressure”. DARE gave us a ton of information about the downsides of drug use (some of which I now know aren’t credible) and didn’t mention the perceived upsides, and even then I knew that was dishonest.
Some of the people who posted when the thread was alive will now have left, been banned, or died since then, but people not realising this is a zombie will try to interact with them.
Even the people who are still active members may have forgotten, lost interest, or changed their whole viewpoint on this topic. You can’t really have a proper discussion or debate with 8-year pauses in it.
pmoseman, you can check the rules on reviving old threads in the FAQs. We have also have had some very extensive discussions in ATMB on the issue which you can consult.
We permit the resurrection of zombie threads if significant new information is added. Since you apparently only raised this one to ask a question that has already been answered many, many times before on the board, I’m closing it.
