The Need For Drug
Prohibition Education.
Analysis By Richard Cowan.
How Can Parents Tell Their Children The Truth In A Sea Of Lies About Marijuana?
November 24, 1999 The Drug Czar has declared the Friday after
Thanksgiving to be "Talk Turkey Day," meaning the day that parents are expected
to lie to their children about marijuana as their patriotic duty to the Fatherland.
See
Friday Is "Talk Turkey
Day."
So The Boston Globe Gives The Czar A Forum
To Urge Parents To Lie To Their Children About Marijuana.
If They Claim That This Isn’t What He Said, They Should Check His Sources.
His ploy highlights what is one of the hottest topics in the discussion about how
parents should tell their children about "drugs" -- the supposed problem faced
by parents who "used drugs" themselves – once upon a time. Or perhaps it
was more like several upon a time.
The easy answer, of course, is simply to tell the truth. However, that is definitely
not what the government has in mind, and many parents find that prospect potentially
embarrassing. The same would apply to any discussion of premarital sex, motorcycles,
tattoos, etc.
In any case, the individual problems that parents may face are compounded by the social
and political context of the dominant prohibition culture, which is saturated with
propaganda to which they are expected to conform.
Although most children see through the lies at some point, that usually comes well
after the parents have had to confront the situation and try to say something that would
not make them look and/or feel like complete fools and/or hypocrites, and even worse,
undermine the credibility of everything that they say.
Whatever parents may decide about being candid by their own past, that problem pales in
comparison with getting and giving honest information about the various substances that
are offered on the anarchic buffet of prohibition.
With a little effort -- and the Internet -- parents and children can get the facts that
will help them. The truth is out there, but that just brings another problem. It should be
even more embarrassing to tell anyone – adult or child -- the truth about what is
really going on.
Even assuming that the parents don’t have any current illegal activities to hide
from their children and the DARE officer– as they once hid them from their own
parents – there remains the risk of telling children that the dominant prohibition
culture is built on a fraud. In some communities – for some people -- this may entail
a degree of risk of ostracism – or worse.
Nonetheless, if parents want to educate their children about the real dangers of
substance abuse, they will have to do just that.
In our society, what children need is not "drug
education" but rather "drug prohibition education." Without that,
the truth about substances will make no sense at all.
Consider:
- There is no correlation between the dangers of a given substance
and its legal status.
See
Australian
Study Finds That Alcohol Is The Drug Most Commonly Associated With Violence,
Followed By "Amphetamines, Heroin And Benzodiazepines (Tranquilizers)."
Marijuana Is Conspicuously Missing From List.
and
Survey On
Teen Alcohol Abuse and Violence Shows How Misdirected
The Prohibitionist "Anti-Drug" Campaign Really Is
and
They Are Legal, So They Must Be Safe:
"Teens Abusing Drugstore Medicines"
Should We Have Drug-Free Drugstores?
Context For Medical Marijuana and "Drug Education" Debates
and
More For The "They
Are Legal, So They Must Be Safe" Files
Context For Medical Marijuana And "Drug Education" Debates
and
Lethal Dose
Of Cynicism From Makers Of Tylenol Poll On Aspirin Dangers
– Context Of Medical Marijuana Debate
- Words are deprived of their meaning, as "anti-drug"
prohibitionist propaganda is distributed by "drug stores" and disseminated by
publications that carry ads for other drugs.
See
"Mom, Dad, What are Drugs?"
and
Magazine Publishers
of America Agree To Feature Prohibitionist Propaganda In Content
To Get Share of $775 Million Ad Campaign
- Almost all of the "drug education" materials are focused
primarily on marijuana. Indeed, even many well-intentioned discussions use
"marijuana" to mean "drugs."
See
A Proposal For A
Rational Allocation Of Drug Education Budgets
Based On The Harm Done By Various Substances -- Analysis By Richard Cowan
- Virtually all of the "authority figures" and
institutions of our society have committed their prestige and credibility to the
suppression of cannabis. In short, the issue cannot be avoided. Someone is lying. Either
parents will have to lie to their children, or they will have to explain to them that all
of these institutions are lying.
See
Column By Authors of
the IOM Report On Medical Marijuana
Shows Why The Public Does Not Trust The Medical Establishment –
And Why They Should Not! With Analysis by Richard Cowan
and
How Marijuana
Prohibition Corrupts All Of Our Institutions
– Medicine, Law Enforcement, Journalism
And How That Corruption Sustains Prohibitionism
- Children are the ostensible targets and supposed beneficiaries of
this campaign.
See
How the War On
Marijuana To Save The Children
Has Become A War On the Children To Save Marijuana Prohibition
- Failure to tell children the truth puts them in danger, but
telling them the truth can also endanger them, if they don’t understand the context.
Marijuana prohibition is not a benign error. It has corrupted all of the institutions of
our society. That is the real world and the real danger for which parents must educate --
warn – their children.
See
Lying To Children
About Medical Marijuana:
Not All The Victims Of Marijuana Prohibition Are Arrested.
Context for the Medical Marijuana Debate.
- The one thing that children must absolutely be told is that the
truth will make them free. We are winning, and that is indeed an occasion for
Thanksgiving.
See
The Disintegration of
Marijuana Prohibition. Analysis By Richard Cowan
Supported