The way my daughter's middle school health class classifies drugs is insane.
Marijuana is its own special category, but club drugs (which for some reason include date rape drugs), inhalants and steroids are all in a "miscellaneous" category together?
Also, note all the ridiculous drug propaganda lies.
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What specifically stands out to you as a ridiculous bit of probaganda?
It's certainly not the most accurate or clinical, and some of the categories are a bit "eh", but nothing popped out to me that I would describe so strongly.
If nothing else, it's a lot more objective and grounded in reality than what they gave me in that dumb dare program. Might be why my reaction is just "close enough".
Marijuana being a gateway drug.
Also being the most abused drug. I'd say that would be caffeine. There are more people who take caffeine daily than cannabis. But this seems to be about "bad" drugs, not "good" drugs.
I'd give it to alcohol, not caffeine personally. I wouldn't say most people "abuse" caffeine, they just drink it.
Abuse to me implies having a negative impact, and I can think of more people who have been negatively impacted by weed than by caffeine, but way more from alcohol than either, and with a significantly more negative impact.
I know people who smoke too much and it's definitely made them stagnate in life and gain a lot of weight.
I know people who drink way too much caffeine and get insomnia, leading to a cycle of discomfort and heartburn from all the coffee.
I know people who drank too much alcohol and died, or developed terrible health complications.
Most people are totally fine with all of them, but alcohol is easily the worst and most common.
It doesn't say that I'm the text. It literally says that it is CALLED a gateway drug because of what SOME people do.
Yup, that's a good one. Gateway drug notion is generally iffy at the absolute most generous.
This one wasn't as "smoking the weed will make you do heroin and die" as others, just "some people do other things after doing this one", but it's still not super worth mentioning.
What are you supposed to do? Start with meth?
Yeah, that's the thought. That or ecstacy or something.
In reality, it's mostly that it's so common that everyone who might do "hard drugs" would have been exposed to pot as just background noise, like alcohol or chocolate ice cream.
It only gets a shade of credence because there have been studies indicating that some people start with pill based drugs and then just leave it at that with a "hard drug" incidence rate lower than someone who smoked pot.
The sample sizes are so small that the only real conclusion someone can draw is that it's not definitely false and it needs more study. But it's not that important, so funding is slow and unlikely.
Yeah my bullshit detector is going off for the pills thing as well. The fact that they're pills (small, compact, no smoking/smell) would skew it heavily.
It is funny to picture the hypothetical person they need to find to interview for the data though.
This is Larry.
Larry once took a Valium he wasn't prescribed at a friend's house, but Larry respects his body too much to smoke weed.
Larry is addicted to intravenous heroin.
Larry takes the L
That was the only thing that popped out to me.
I mean that's been a "thing" since at least the late 80s. Not that i think its accurate but its all too common an opinion you will find that isnt completely batshit crazy.
DARE came to my HS in the mid-late 80s. A cop was standing at a table with various things on it. One of which was a big bag of weed. I said,"Damn! That's a big bag of weed!" The cop replied, totally seriously,"THAT'S ENOUGH WEED TO KILL YOU!!!" My friends and I just laughed and walked away.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. It's close enough for the target audience. Doesn't go the any extreme.
The information in the hallucinogenic section about acid flashbacks is incorrect. This was a false rumour spread in the 70s to demonize the political opponents of Nixon.
Hrm, I always thought it was just a mis-name for PTSD after an excessive dose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder
It looks like there's at least a degree of clinical validation to it being a combo of PTSD and "sometimes colors stay funny for a while".
Are you sure you're not thinking of "the entire war on drugs, but particularly pot and heroin"?
That's what I thought was an invention by the Nixon administration.
Oh, HPPD is definitely a thing, but extraordinarily rare.
I may have misspoke about the brown acid - this was a legit warning resulting from "home-brew chemists" attempting to make their own LSD and failing to create it properly. Most of the supplies back then were direct from Sandoz (Novartis) and basically were being given away to the scientific community for novel testing. Fun stuff.
I'm talking about the hyperbole of "acid flashbacks" which was a narrative introduced to discourage and demonize LSD usage by the political and intellectual opponents of the Nixon administration. "Rots your brain permanently" and all that other garbage.
Turns out regular LSD usage by the "hippie" community and by many people involved in high-level education (particularly college and university professors) was making people feel more connected and empathetic towards one another, and that just didn't do for the Republicans who needed everyone to fear "the other".
What they also did with marijuana and heroin, and subsequently with crack cocaine, was truly abhorrent.
I agree too. Just the classifications alone seem close enough, and GHB is absolutely a 'club' drug that also happens to be a date rape drug. Back in my heyday, I knew several people that would use it recreationally when we'd go out to an EDM show (or in the hours after we got back to the crash pad to keep the party going).
I didn't read the whole thing, so I can comment on specific content like 'weed being a gateway' drug, but that's been disproven time and time again and this type of propaganda is common from schools and the government as they're bound by archaic laws to portray drugs in such a way.
GHB is so fun.
I honestly never tried it simply because the connotations with it being the "date rape" drug (and also because I was already enjoying myself with other stuff).
Fair! It’s kinda like being a little drunk, but also REALLY horny for food (it makes food better than even weed does), and also reeeeally enhances sexual stuff. My partner and I would take it and get weeeeird.
If you're active, you can stay active forever. GHBike Rides are fantastic.
If you’re laying around, you WILL fall asleep. Your brain will crave sleep more than a junkie craves heroin (fent now, I guess.)
I agree, but I don’t think D.A.R.E. was dumb. It was just difficult to hear the personal opinions that officers had of people who had been on particular drugs that are so often used in a hospital setting. Between the time I was an infant to the time I was ten, I had already been hospitalized for various illnesses and injuries that sometimes required hospital grade medications. Try telling a third grade kid that she is a bad person because the hospital put her on intravenous pain medication after having both her radius and ulna completely broken in a fall from the school’s playground equipment.
On a side note, after so many hospitalizations in my life, I absolutely hate people who use drugs for fun.
Mind your own business and you'll have a happier life, less hateful.
It’s everyone’s business when some recreational drug user makes bad choices that impact the lives of others.
Nah it was everyone's business before that. People "drink responsibly". They can and do imbibe other drugs responsibly.
And it's everyone's business that people like you make drug reform impossible, because all the science agrees that the only way to solve "the drug problem" is to legalise and regulate everything.
You're suffering from the same bias that transphobes who say "I can always spot trans people" do; you're simply unaware of how blindingly ignorant you are of the reality of the situation.
No, as someone who has had many of the medical drugs they discuss in D.A.R.E., I wouldn’t compare myself to some cis gendered person who happens to be transphobic. That would be comparing opposites. I’m a person who has been given morphine several times in surgery, and after hemorrhaging in labor. I don’t think the government should legalize recreational use of morphine and regulate it. That seems dumb to me. D.A.R.E. doesn’t seem dumb. Sorry if you feel differently, but I don’t think we should legalize all drugs. You might argue for different drugs being legalized. I don’t want people that hate me to be allowed to carry drugs that they might put into my food order at a restaurant, either. You can’t assume that people who want to legally carry, or keep, drugs want to do so for personal use. It isn’t safe to have people carrying drugs on them that can be used to poison others. Not everyone who is into drugs is looking to party with you. Some are looking to get rid of people.
"They've given me opiates in a medical setting so that's why I know recreational drugs are bad for society"
So, to reiterate, exactly your type of intelligently stupid willfull ignorance is one of the main reasons that we have so many drug problems. If people like you weren't brainwashed so easily, if you actually spent even a tiny bit of time looking into this subject, you'd realise you're wrong. But you won't. You won't.
I've argued about this longer than most of Lemmy users have been alive. I know all the science. I bet you know none of it.
Drug prohibition does not work and anyone who supports it is either ignorant or directly benefitting from the illegal drug trade. That's it. There's no other alternatives. There is not a single logical reason to keep the prohibition according to science. Everything improves with proper legal frameworks in which to sell the drugs that clearly can not be effectively banned.
This isn't about "feelings". It's about cold facts. And the fact is that by your rhetoric, by your behaviour, you're indirectly enabling drug abuse and all the heinous shit that cartels get up to. That is unless you're willing to admit you're wrong and start supporting a complete reformation of this inane law. That's the only moral position.
It isn’t safe to have people carrying drugs on them that can be used to poison others.
These are the types of weird fantasy scenarios you have to make up and it still doesn't even work, in the slightest. There are a dozen more dangerous chemicals in everyone's cleaning cupboard than anything you'd find sold as a recreational substance. Why aren't they banned? Why are people allowed to handle gasoline by themselves? You know you could torch people with gasoline, right? And we allow people to drive around in metal hunks filled with gas, as incredibly velocities? You know you can die just from falling down, right? You walk on the street, every day. Anyone could push you and with bad luck, kill you.
People like you honestly never stop to think about the things you say. They make absolutely no sense. And it doesn't matter to you that you can't make a single thing make sense when you're trying to defend the drug prohibition. No... it's just been stamped to your brain that "DRUGS = WRONG" and you don't have the cognitive capability to question that.
Here, have a listen to what a former police officer who used to infiltrate drug gangs has to say about the war on drugs: https://youtu.be/y_TV4GuXFoA?si=SXdIKIP1ON43N594&t=716 (Hint: his memoir is called "Good Cop, Bad War")
There is literally no other option than to have a properly managed and regulated legal trade of these recreational substances. To keep the situation were currently in, willfully, is to willfully endanger lives, perpetuate drug ABUSE (not use, which is different) and to support criminal gangs which don't give a fuck about anyone.
Oh right, that copper is just one guy. Hmm how about https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/world-leaders-call-for-legalisation-of-drugs
And I could literally paste studies and data here for several comments to max char limit and it still wouldn't even make you question that maybe you should question your feelings on the matter in accordance with reality. I know it won't, because I've had this exact same argument a million times, and it's always the same. If you really wanted there to be less problems caused by drugs, you'd be in favour of legalising them, as backwards as it must sound to you. Because legalising is the only way to take the market out of the hands of the criminals, as the market will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER die.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/y_TV4GuXFoA?si=SXdIKIP1ON43N594&t=716
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You think that would end the illegal drug trade? People can legally own guns. They are legal to own and we have regulations for owning them. Guess what is still traded on the black market, and moved by gangs for cash? Guns are. Legalizing drugs will not solve the problem. Instead, you will have food service workers carrying drugs like opium on them, without legal repercussions. You want a blueberry smoothie your ex is making for you on your next lunch break? I guess it depends on who that is making it, and how much they hate you. I would hope they chose a lifestyle that didn’t involve drugs. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be a drive-thru order for you. Wouldn’t want someone to get drugs in their food and then drive away while consuming it.
I don’t have to agree with you. I just see too many problems arising from legalizing all drugs, as you suggested.
Oh and yes, it would end illegal trade to the extent ending the prohibition of alcohol did.
I live in Finland and black market drugs are 1000x easier to get than black market alcohol. Or black market guns for that matter. Both exist, but not really.
Everyone knows someone who sells drugs of some sort. Most people's definitely don't know people who sell alcohol or drugs. Well, alcohol is slightly more common, but usually it's just flogged tax free or even completely legally ordered in bulk from Germany and then sold to friends.
But yeah, the science is in and yes, legalising drugs would kill the illegal drug trade.
Just like I said. You won't even question your attitude, despite the overwhelming objective evidence that you're wrong, despite everyone in the drug trade admitting to this, despite world leaders calling for legalisation. See what I mean when I say that it's people like you who are responsible for the horrible drug situation that we have? That amount of willful ignorance is literally harmful to society.
Where exactly do you think the guns come from? From legal manufacturers. Comparing guns to drugs is appealing because they seem so similar, yet they both have the exact same solution: regulation.
The US doesn't regulate drugs, and it doesn't really regulate guns at all either. In other countries, black markets for guns are ridiculously negligible. They exist, sure, but they're ridiculously small compared to the US and the Americas in general. Perhaps because the US has a military-industrial complex. Again, about what makes money for people.
The only way to properly implement regulation to guns is to have proper gun laws, which most other countries have. The US is a massive outlier in gun-violence, exactly because of the lack of regulation.
The argument is also disingenuous because there's only violent uses for guns, but the same doesn't apply for recreational substances. Show me one larger culture group of humans that don't have some sort of recreational way to get their buzz on. Might take you a moment. But to point out a culture which doesn't have guns at all, or at least nearly to the level the US does? Pick a map and throw a dart on it, you'll more than likely land on an example.
Legalizing drugs will not solve the problem. Instead, you will have food service workers carrying drugs like opium on them, without legal repercussions
This is exactly what I mean. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, so you make these asinine arguments that were brainwashed into you. So what if your waiter has a pinch of opium in his pocket? Alcohol is legal. Waiters carry alcohol all the time, for work even. Why doesn't that bother you? Is it perhaps because it's not cool to drink on the job? Would legalising drugs make it so that it's socially acceptable to be fucking smashed at work? I've heard a ton of variations of this moronic bs "argument." "*B-B-Bbut if we legalise drugs, I'll have to worry about my surgeon being high when he's performing surgery" "I don't want to have to be piloted by some junkie scum" Like... when did you last meet a drunk pilot? A drunk surgeon? A surgeon who's high? They have constant access to high grade narcotics, you know. Again, exactly what I meant, saying that you have to make up these fantasy scenarios which would never ever happen and even then the logic doesn't even work.
You should ask yourself why was the prohibition of alcohol repealed. Googling that you might come upon names like "Al Capone" and even something as familiar as "Machine Gun Kelly", but this one isn't about the rapper. (Shortly: organised crime got so out of hand and the toxicity of homemade booze and even government poisoned booze that it was insane and the situation couldn't be continued without society falling apart.)
Legalising drugs makes them safer, gets them out of the hands of criminals, meaning taxes for the government, health for drug abusers, and less stigma for responsible drug users. Yes, we exist, much like gays did even back in the 50's. They just weren't talked about all that much, for some weird reason. It's not even just about what good it will do. It's also about personal liberty.
"I don't have to agree with you." No, you don't, but this isn't my opinion. This is reality. So you're saying "I don't have to agree with reality and objective facts." Which is exactly what I said in the first place; willful ignorance.
You did exactly as I said you would, and protested loudly, but I bet you didn't read a single one of those links or even watch the 5 second clip. There really aren't any other options except being ignorant of the matter or directly benefitting from drugs being illegal. Those are the only two type of people who think prohibition should be maintained. And if you think "I don't think they should be legalised but I don't benefit from illegal drugs in any way" then you're in the former group.
Wait, so you think dare wasn't dumb, but you have specific negative memories associated with it mischarecterizing drug users due to your legitimate usage?
I would call a program that makes children feel bad for going to the doctor "dumb".
Your dislike of people who use drugs because you went to the hospital a lot is quite strange. I'm not sure why those would be related.
Did they put you in the hospital, or make a police officer come to your school and tell you you were a bad person?
D.A.R.E. never hurt me. Sorry it seems like the program did something abusive to you personally. You could always file a police report about it, if it was that bad. It’s not like the officers who led it were abusive drug users in our lives, sent to the classroom to beat us with belts, or closed fists. If your biggest gripe from childhood is a bunch of drug abuse resistance education officers, lecturing you for less than one hour, then you had a pretty privileged childhood.
You're making a lot of leaps there from me calling it "dumb".
You'll have to forgive me for thinking it made you uncomfortable, considering that's what you said.
And none of that even touches where you get the connection between "I was in the hospital" and "I hate drug users".
D.A.R.E. pretty much defined all of the drugs and their side effects, so children could be educated about drugs. Nothing they said about types of drugs, their uses, or their side effects was medically incorrect. I don’t know why you’re calling it dumb.
I’m sorry, did you say YOU make me uncomfortable? Because putting words in my mouth does that. I didn’t say anything about being uncomfortable before that.
Hey look, if you want to say D.A.R.E. was dumb, and you would rather have a lifestyle that includes recreational drug use, who am I to stop you? I just think you would feel differently if you were in the hospital, for some surgery, or emergency, and had to have some of those drugs given to you intravenously. I doubt you’d go looking for more of them after an experience like that. You’d be looking for a garbage can to puke the next morning, and crying about having a splitting headache from hell. You’d be crying because you want to eat food, but can’t trust your stomach to handle it. Go have your “fun”, and denounce programs like D.A.R.E. Maybe you’ll feel differently if you find yourself in a hospital recovery room one day.
It was just difficult to hear the personal opinions that officers had of people who had been on particular drugs that are so often used in a hospital setting.
Try telling a third grade kid that she is a bad person because the hospital put her on intravenous pain medication
Forgive me for thinking these phrases imply discomfort. I can only go by my life experiences, which led me to think that calling experiences "difficult", or being called a "bad person" by an authority figure would be aptly described as at least "uncomfortable".
Dare was dumb because it was an abject failure. Presenting information in the most alarmist possible context while being dry to the point that kids tune out any significant information is a terrible way to treat health education.
You have some very confusing issues tying your hospital experience to a personal judgement of people who use drugs.
Do you think that other people haven't been to the hospital? Do you think that I haven't been to the hospital? It's not that uncommon. Hell, you mentioned breaking your arm falling off some playground equipment. I had the same injury as a child, except I also had a greenstick fracture in my humorous that I had to be put under to have corrected. I was so ill coming out of anesthesia that I remember it less fondly than the actual injury.
Jumping from a bad experience with intravenous pain killers to "I hate people" is weird. Those people didn't have anything to do with it. Why do you hate them? Not understand? Sure, that would make sense. Find foolish? Totally get it. But hate? Why hate?
And why all drug users? What does a pothead have to do with it at all?
Given your experience and the way they made you feel from the practitioners' sheer ignorant and biased approach I would have thought you'd definitely be the first to call the program "dumb" as the very least of the criticisms to be levelled at it.
I don’t think it was dumb to educate children about the dangers of drug abuse. What I think is dumb, is the new program they have created to replace D.A.R.E. That program has representatives that stand outside of stores, pestering shoppers for donations, and when the shoppers decline, the representatives say things like, “guess you choose drugs!” while fake coughing to mask their remarks. That’s immature and unprofessional. D.A.R.E. was more professional.
I think my surprise here is that given the program's reputation, and your experience with it, it seems there was quite some gulf between theoretical intent and practice. Educating children about drugs, probably seems relatively uncontroversial to most, I think you could get a lot of people with otherwise pretty different views on drugs to get behind the idea. The way the D.A.R.E. program went about it and the content of the program and the accuracy of the education they attempted to deliver seem from a distance to have been very questionable. This is why it's so perplexing to me why you hold such a surprising level of respect for D.A.R.E., I mean sure the intent could have been education, but it doesn't sound very much like the intent and the reality had a lot of overlap. I'm careful with my wording here because where I grew up we didn't have 'D.A.R.E.' specifically so I can only form judgment based on what one hears and reads about the program.
Well, I had D.A.R.E., and unless someone put something in my food, or stuck me with something, I haven’t used illegal recreational drugs. I say illegal recreational drugs, because I can’t be held responsible for what the hospitals have given me in surgeries, and during labor/delivery. I don’t blame D.A.R.E. for the things that have happened to me in my life.
