Social norms are powerful things. Some people did a study at the Petrified Forrest National Park on how to prevent people from stealing pieces of fossilized wood. When they put "Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the park, changing the state of the Petrified Forest’" on signs the amount of theft was much larger than anything else they tried[1]. So if you're running a public awareness campaign emphasizing how many people break the rules is just about the worst thing you can do. The message DARE seemed to be giving me when I was a kid was that drug use was normal.
DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
81–90 of 132 posts
Re: DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, just do drugs. I mean, LSD is great, and people should try it. Smoking pot is also nice, I've done some great writing while stoned. Heck, Paul Erdos did amphetamines his whole life. Why are we trying to convince everyone not to do drugs again?
C0nc0rdance is a scientist who makes well researched videos about various subjects, and did a few videos on the health effects of marijuana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnNPm5cG85c It may not be the most harmful drug, but it's certainly not harmless or non-addictive. LSD can cause mental illness to emerge in some people. I also remember a study that gave LSD to 10 people during a religious sermon. 9 of them went…
>It may not be the most harmful drug, but it's certainly not harmless
I'm no advocate of the claims that marijuana is "harmless" or, as some even claim, "good for you". But harm is relative. Sitting in your chair all day is harmful. Eating half the food we do is harmful, as are most medications.
Arguing that marijuana is "not harmless" isn't much of an argument at all.
Re: DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I almost want to login to my non-throwaway/hellbanned account just to laugh at this notion. The times I've been most curious. Most engrossed in a piece of new tech has been when I'm high. Some night, I will go home from a 9-10 hour work day and get high to relax and make dinner and then go to bed... but will wind up reading about the latest and greatest in container tech, or whatever. The notion that pot makes you di…
And for me, every time I smoke pot I become absolutely useless. Anything more difficult than watching whatever the hell happens to be on TV is nigh on impossible for me. And I don't normally watch TV! Anecdotes are fun.
Nobody talks about dosage when they talk about cannabis, why is that?
For example, downing a bottle of Jack vs. having a couple of beers. Unless a severe alcoholic, no person will be good for anything after the former (health risks not even included), whereas you are not really impaired after the latter.
Dosage matters, and that's true for cannabis as well. Most people won't be very productive/active after hitting the bong or whatever, lightly vaporizing some sativa strain, different story.
Re: DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps this teacher was looking more for thoughtful analysis and insight rather than pedantically seeking out minor grammatical errors.
Call me archaic, but schools should teach proper spelling and grammar in addition to the process of reasoning. I can't take any writing seriously if it's done poorly. (I didn't think the essay was done poorly though, it's still better than a lot of writing done on the internet nowadays)
You are archaic. I _almost_ said 'your archaic' there. Grammar, spelling and punctuation are often arbitrary rules that are difficult to grok, except with extensive experience with them. One of the best ways to discourage that experience is to make everything about everything and mark down an otherwise-excellent essay due to spelling.
Note that I am not saying that we shouldn't teach those things (and schools do teach those things), but that teaching them in a lower-stakes fashion where people are able to succeed at the core learning goal (argument in this case) without bouncing off of the Wall Of Spelling is a much better approach.
Re: DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, just do drugs. I mean, LSD is great, and people should try it. Smoking pot is also nice, I've done some great writing while stoned. Heck, Paul Erdos did amphetamines his whole life. Why are we trying to convince everyone not to do drugs again?
"Why are we trying to convince everyone not to do drugs again?" I guess you could say that occasional use is not a big problem for most drugs. But I wouldn't recommend it, because most people go through some vulnerable time when they could become addicted (or otherwise abuse drugs), and at that time you don't want to have the stuff in your house or a dealer friend ready to supply. We dismiss people who join cults tha…
> most people go through some vulnerable time when they could become addicted (or otherwise abuse drugs), and at that time you don't want to have the stuff in your house or a dealer friend ready to supply
Sometimes people do drugs to cope with their other problems in life. They need drugs as a reprieve. Life can be hard and people have used alcohol, pot and many other substances to create a refuge. Of course that doesn't solve the problem, but solving the problem is not always the top priority, and many times the problem has no solution. Why should we morally deny a refuge from anxiety and suffering to other people?
Re: DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, just do drugs. I mean, LSD is great, and people should try it. Smoking pot is also nice, I've done some great writing while stoned. Heck, Paul Erdos did amphetamines his whole life. Why are we trying to convince everyone not to do drugs again?
I think it's a bit misleading to simply say "LSD is great and you should try it". It can be interesting, but also can be scary as fuck, and you should be in a good place mentally before trying it.
I read an article yesterday about micro-dosing LSD at a level where no hallucinations appear, but a boost in energy and creativity is felt. Like a different kind of coffee that doesn't wane after only two hours.
Re: DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
#87The colloquial use of the word "anyways" nearly ruined this article for me.
Re: DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. There are numerous counter-examples to this, from artists and musicians to game developers, engineers and scientists. I suspect that the perceived correlation between smoking cannabis and being a loser is that successful cannabis smokers have a strong incentive against disclosing this habit -- they could lose their jobs, or be excluded from further opportunities. They also have more resources and possibly l…
> There are numerous counter-examples to this I'm not saying the GP is correct (I'd rather see a study than "something a cartoon said"), but there are "numerous counter-examples" to everything . Pack-a-day smokers who lived to 110, high-functional alcoholics, people who lived long lives around lead, mercury and asbestos. That doesn't mean you don't want to encourage people to not try to beat the odds.
Tobacco smoking, alcohol abuse and exposure to lead, mercury and asbestos have been shown to have strong negative health effects by extensive studies with a lot of statistical power and grounded in theory.
This is not the case for cannabis use. The public perception of cannabis as having horrible negative health consequences comes from state propaganda, not science. Look it up yourself. But look for scientific articles, not newspaper articles.
So before you use that classical argument, you have to actually have some data that provides evidence for the substance under question being generally harmful.
Carl Sagan (one of the counter-examples) used to confront his scientist friends with this, and they were surprised to find that there is indeed very little scientific support for this view. For a while, the strongest result was that cannabis could help trigger early schizophrenia, but even this research is on shaky grounds (turns out that the population under study was highly biased).
Re: DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's a bit misleading to simply say "LSD is great and you should try it". It can be interesting, but also can be scary as fuck, and you should be in a good place mentally before trying it.
I read an article yesterday about micro-dosing LSD at a level where no hallucinations appear, but a boost in energy and creativity is felt. Like a different kind of coffee that doesn't wane after only two hours.
Microdosing of psychedelics isn't very well (or at all?) researched and it's hard to tell whether what people are experiencing is a placebo or not.
Re: DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
#90I remember DARE. A message delivered to us by people we didn't respect. A police officer that no one trusted and videos of teens we perceived to be losers telling us that drugs were bad. The program seemed to focus on social pressure not to do drugs, but social pressure is meaningless and ineffective when it's coming from somewhere beneath you. It had the effect of making my peers want to get high to distinguish them…
It is very stupid to scare youth with health consequences. For young people, the world "health" means nothing. It's very blank. It means a lot for senior demographics, and so they happily push measures involving scaring young people with health problems. Which then won't work.
That's a very good point. You can also substitute various other demographics for young people, like lower socioeconomic classes, people heavily discounting their future, impulsive people, etc.
Health disguised as vanity works quite well though. Case in point, current fitness boom.