Happy 420! A Call For a Change in Drug Education

All the talk about 420 today has me thinking about the “education” I had about drug use as a child. I’m sure we all went through DARE or something similar; in my opinion, those programs do way more damage than good, and sometimes even inspire dangerous drug use in kids.

Here’s how. My DARE program told us that any and all drugs were incredibly dangerous; one toke of a joint or sip of beer and your life would pretty much be over. It wasn’t long before a lot of us would read an article about how occasional marijuana use doesn’t have any negative long-term health effects, or find that we had family members who smoked and weren’t total sociopaths, and realize that something was wrong with the education we were getting.

For some kids, that realization meant they’d go on to educate themselves about what was and wasn’t truly dangerous, and make good decisions based on the actual facts about drugs. But a vast majority of disillusioned DARE grads I knew took what they learned about moderate alcohol and pot use being OK to mean that everything they were told about drugs ever was a lie; that all drugs are safe, and there’s no reason not to do any of them.

So parents and educators, please: Tell your kids the truth. Tell them that having a few beers at a party won’t kill them, but driving a car afterwards will. That it’s probably not too dangerous to smoke a joint and watch South Park, but mixing Ecstasy with Cocaine before going out to a crowded club with no access to water is the worst decision they could ever make.

Most kids are smart enough to make their own decisions, and they’ll listen to what you say if they know you won’t tell them lies. Tell them the truth about drugs and let them think for themselves.

Posted by:

Rachel Bishop