Poll: Do you feel you were lied to about Drugs in D.A.R.E., or other programs in school?

[The Man With the Soap]

No, not particularly. Then again I don't remember being told that banana rot thing.

Grade school, middle school, high school. All of it. They never gave us the full truth.
They never told us It's impossible to die from Marijuana, that it's the safest drug even versus legal drugs, and its not physically addictive. And the fact that Ectasy was a legal prescription drug up until 1985.

Of course they're not going to tell you that! They're trying to DIScourage you from using the stuff, not ENcourage.

I don't know about you guys, but at my school we had a drug and alcohol awareness week. They had a junkie come in and show us a video where an alcoholic literally said that alcohol saved his life, we learned how to make crack, we learned about the different highs with every drug, we learned the streen names of marijuana, and we learned where to get drugs. Also, a kid got kicked out because he had drugs in his locker, and they just told us not to keep our drugs at school.

 

[Venatio]

The system is messed up in this department. Apparently a convicted drug dealer will get more prison time than a rapist, its disgusting. It's not like I would want to start doing drugs, the idea of being addicted to a chemical (other than coffee) to any degree, from once in a while to wasting my life away, just scares me a little. But thats no cause for lying or employing scare tactics (*avoids political comment by strength of will*) and it is pretty ridiculous what they tell kids.

But what do they think, in their minds we are just out of the age group that believes in Santa Clause at that point.

They mean well, and ultimately the choice is yours.

 

[Umberphoenix]

I never felt that they lied to us about drugs in school(then again I live in Oregon), they told us about the laws(like the legality of Marijuana), and about ALL of the side effects and why people may want to take the drugs in the first place(yes, they DID tell us that drugs make you feel good, then they told us not to do them). And just a side-note, tobacco is more damaging then meth... to the lungs. Meth damages a whole lot more then your respiratory system.

 

[Seanchaidh]

No, not particularly. Then again I don't remember being told that banana rot thing.

Grade school, middle school, high school. All of it. They never gave us the full truth.
They never told us It's impossible to die from Marijuana, that it's the safest drug even versus legal drugs, and its not physically addictive. And the fact that Ectasy was a legal prescription drug up until 1985.

Of course they're not going to tell you that! They're trying to DIScourage you from using the stuff, not ENcourage.

That's the problem. Programs instituted to achieve a behavioral result rather than honestly to educate people aren't really educational programs-- they're indoctrination. And they employ bullshit: claims which are propagated by people who don't care whether the claims are true or false. When students can see that the DARE program is giving them bullshit and not real facts, they often rebel against it. People don't like to feel manipulated and will do the opposite of what a manipulator wants them to do just out of pure spite.

 

[manedwolf86]

I was in catholic school when they did the whole dare thing. So i bet my dare was worse then what you guys at the public schools had

 

[AbsoluteVirtue18]

Exaggerated maybe. But hey, I took the damned oath, so I shall stick by it.

 

[newuseforvintage]

Tobbaco is more dangerous and harmful than Meth, in fact its just short of heroin as in amount of damage to the body.

I don't believe that for a second, I'm sorry.

I'm going to second that, i've seen people on meth; Its not pretty. I've seen people on tobacco and pot, and cocain, and heroin. Of the five i'd say meth is the most physically damaging. Its horrifying what some of these meth users look like. Those sick poster adds they use aren't that far from the truth.

I agree. From what I've gathered, meth is the worst. Then heroin (any rockstar will tell you how bad that is). Then cocaine, followed by tobacco, and last would be pot.

We've been lied to plenty about these things. Some over-exaggerated, some under-exaggerated, but some truths were withheld.

Here's my pharmacutical rule of thumb. The more you have to process it, the worse it is for you. Pot is as natural as i comes, its just a leaf. Tobacco is processed a little, cocain is next on the list, then heroin, and for meth you practically have to own a full high school chemistry lab. Plants usually don't kill people, but strange chemicals have a way of fucking you up royally.

I hate to say it but that rule of thumb is flawed to the point of pure wrongness.
Firstly the small point that heroin is worse for you than cocaine, in reality pure heroin has such small physical effects as to be unnoticable, it is even classified as a preservative, it makes your skin look younger. Whilst it is incredibly physically addictive a heroin addict on heroin is really returned to a "base point" where they can function normally. Good heroin becomes a part of your body just like food or oxygen.
Also, whilst i agree with you on meth being as bad for you as smoking shards of satan's icey icey heart you don't need any expensive or advanced equipment to make it. This is what's so horrible about the stuff, people can make it virtually anywhere with stuff that is not only readily available but probably already lying around their house.
But the idea that it's chemicals that fuck you up whilst plants are relatively harmless is just wrong. Ignoring the huge number of lethally toxic plants out their let's look at some plants that are used as a recreational substance.
To start with there's the two strongest hallucinogens known to humanity (which is scary when you think about some research chemicals out there like 2cb, 2ce, 5meo-amt etc. which can make it appear as though the walls are melting) which when smoked can send your brain reeling to the point where you can see entirely different rooms to the one you were just in. DMT and Salvia terrify me. And Salvia is still legal! You can get it by the ounce online!
There's a plant that grows wild here in australia the flowers of which can send you permanently insane, I had a friend who took it and then commited suicide because he became uncomfortable in his own skin to the point where he slashed his chest open to "be able to climb out".
I would go so far as to say that the more processed something is the more comfortable i am with it, excluding meth. At least if it is processed you know or can find out exactly what's happening with it.

Really it is the cutting agents that dealers use which are so incredibly horrendously bad. This is why heroin has such a bad rep, not that it should be good, the dealers use the most disgusting chemicals to cut it down. And meth is basically just a big batch of cutting agents!
Sorry to rant but comments along the lines of "if it's natural it's cool" really get under my skin.

 

[Satin6T]

marijuana will KILL YOU

 

[Rigs83]

Teachers and police lying to children?! [HEADING=1]IMPOSSIBLE!!![/HEADING]

 

[lacktheknack]

It's a waste, if someone wants to do drugs, DARE won't defer them, if they don't, it doesn't matter.

 

[Dancingman]

Drug threads are annoying, oh and meth is most certainly worse than tobacco, I don't feel like contributing anything more.

 

[Low Key]

I knew of DARE, but they never came to my school. MADD came in to speak quite often though.

 

[thiosk]

As far as the gateway drug stuff goes, with regards to pot, im convinced that the only reason it is associated as such is because its illegal.

You have to hang out with drug dealers to get pot.

And this weekend they are out-- but hey, they got a little something something else... and you got 50 bucks................................

Prohibition is the gateway drug.
Just say no to government.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

No, not particularly. Then again I don't remember being told that banana rot thing.

Grade school, middle school, high school. All of it. They never gave us the full truth.
They never told us It's impossible to die from Marijuana, that it's the safest drug even versus legal drugs, and its not physically addictive. And the fact that Ectasy was a legal prescription drug up until 1985.

Of course they're not going to tell you that! They're trying to DIScourage you from using the stuff, not ENcourage.

That's the problem. Programs instituted to achieve a behavioral result rather than honestly to educate people aren't really educational programs-- they're indoctrination. And they employ bullshit: claims which are propagated by people who don't care whether the claims are true or false. When students can see that the DARE program is giving them bullshit and not real facts, they often rebel against it. People don't like to feel manipulated and will do the opposite of what a manipulator wants them to do just out of pure spite.

I don't remember being told anything that wasn't true. Granted it's been over 16 years since I took the thing. However leaving out details is not the same as lieing. And considering the overall goal is your continued good health and well being, I'm sure as hell not going to condemn them.

 

[Seanchaidh]

"Gateway drug" is another piece of bullshit. They give you this statistic that "99% of people addicted to harder drugs also have tried marijuana" as if that's supposed to mean something. The more interesting statistic is how many people who try marijuana have become addicted to other illegal drugs... and that one's quite a lot lower than 99% (26% if I remember correctly, although statistics about this sort of thing are very much uncertain.) By the logic of the "gateway drug theory" practically anything can be a gateway drug. It just so blatantly gets the thinking wrong that it's amazing anyone thought it was a good policy argument. I eat vegetables AND THEN I STARTED USING COCAINE. BAN VEGETABLES.

I should say, though, that even if it were 99% of people who try marijuana ending up with harder drugs, that still wouldn't necessarily mean that it's anything about marijuana that causes people to use other stuff. Correlations aren't causation; that sort of stat could easily be explained by certain sorts of people people just trying everything including marijuana. But since there isn't even a strong correlation, that doesn't matter. Mo explanation of the statistic is necessary because it isn't even consistent with the gateway theory, let alone supportive of it.

What's more, even if there were evidence of the gateway drug theory, that STILL doesn't give us a good reason to have the DARE program, because the DARE program doesn't even have a noticeable affect in preventing drug use. The idea that there are "Gateway Drugs" loses every stage of the argument, from theory to policy recommendation. There's absolutely no intellectual heft to it at all.

 

[Seanchaidh]

No, not particularly. Then again I don't remember being told that banana rot thing.

Grade school, middle school, high school. All of it. They never gave us the full truth.
They never told us It's impossible to die from Marijuana, that it's the safest drug even versus legal drugs, and its not physically addictive. And the fact that Ectasy was a legal prescription drug up until 1985.

Of course they're not going to tell you that! They're trying to DIScourage you from using the stuff, not ENcourage.

That's the problem. Programs instituted to achieve a behavioral result rather than honestly to educate people aren't really educational programs-- they're indoctrination. And they employ bullshit: claims which are propagated by people who don't care whether the claims are true or false. When students can see that the DARE program is giving them bullshit and not real facts, they often rebel against it. People don't like to feel manipulated and will do the opposite of what a manipulator wants them to do just out of pure spite.

I don't remember being told anything that wasn't true. Granted it's been over 16 years since I took the thing. However leaving out details is not the same as lieing. And considering the overall goal is your continued good health and well being, I'm sure as hell not going to condemn them.

Leaving out important details is dishonest and deceptive, even if it isn't lying. I will certainly condemn them because I have more respect for myself and other humans than to condone bullshit in education. And the program doesn't even accomplish health or wellbeing.

 

[LooK iTz Jinjo]

I was told something along the lines of "If you even try doing drugs just once then you'll instantly become addicted and fuck up your entire life for ever." Think I proved them wrong there... Fucking idiots!

 

[Canadamus Prime]

No, not particularly. Then again I don't remember being told that banana rot thing.

Grade school, middle school, high school. All of it. They never gave us the full truth.
They never told us It's impossible to die from Marijuana, that it's the safest drug even versus legal drugs, and its not physically addictive. And the fact that Ectasy was a legal prescription drug up until 1985.

Of course they're not going to tell you that! They're trying to DIScourage you from using the stuff, not ENcourage.

That's the problem. Programs instituted to achieve a behavioral result rather than honestly to educate people aren't really educational programs-- they're indoctrination. And they employ bullshit: claims which are propagated by people who don't care whether the claims are true or false. When students can see that the DARE program is giving them bullshit and not real facts, they often rebel against it. People don't like to feel manipulated and will do the opposite of what a manipulator wants them to do just out of pure spite.

I don't remember being told anything that wasn't true. Granted it's been over 16 years since I took the thing. However leaving out details is not the same as lieing. And considering the overall goal is your continued good health and well being, I'm sure as hell not going to condemn them.

Leaving out important details is dishonest and deceptive, even if it isn't lying. I will certainly condemn them because I have more respect for myself and other humans than to condone bullshit in education. And the program doesn't even accomplish health or wellbeing.

It's not bullshit if it's still true. And if they succeed in keep you from getting into drugs and shit, then it does accomplish health & wellbeing. But hey I don't know how the program has changed in the 16 years since I went through it, and hell the approach probably varies from place to place anyway. I'm hardly even in a position to defend it, since I even tried pot once so I can't even claim it's successful.