I grew up in Britain so I am not aware of DARE but after reading some materials, I am not surprised that they failed.
When it comes to sex and drugs, I do not believe in preaching or scare tatcis. But just in giving the facts so children have all the infomation they need about the topics and are able to make a concious choice and deal with the concequences of that choice.
There is a book in Japan called `jisatsu ron`. It is a book about suicide techniques that describes the effectivness, sucess rate, pain, and after effects of popular suicide methods. I think that this helps reduce suicide because it gives people a chance to think about the harm that they are really doing to themselves, without judgement, guilt or persuasion. I think that the same approack should be taken for sex and drugs
I cannot stop my own child taking drugs, but I hope that they know what an overdose is like and what to do in the events of one. Infomation saves more lives than preachy seminaires
I was not given any formal drug education in school. But what put me of drugs in the end was my part time job at the local pharmacy during my first year of Univerisy.
The heroine addicts would come to the pharmacy for some medicine everyday or so (methodone I think). There was one guy, he was always completly out of it and part of his right eye had been eaten away so you could see a lot of black. His skin was red and he just looked awful.
I do not know what did that to him, or even if I was drugs or an unrelated incident. But whenever I am tempted to take drugs, I see that half-eaten eye staring back at me.
