WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT DRUGS?

As far as I can tell, there is no real drug education in America, and there are far too many drugs available to let that be the case. Face it, is there any kind of Drug Ed class on your campus? No. The only thing most students have is DARE, so let's start with that.

On January 15th, 2003, the U.S. Government Accounting Office released its report on the DARE Program - To read it in it's entirety - Click Here

Evaluations of the DARE Elementary School
Curriculum Show No Significant Differences in Drug
Use Between DARE and Non-DARE Students

The six evaluations that we reviewed of the long-term effectiveness of the DARE
elementary school curriculum found no statistically significant differences in illicit
drug use between students who received DARE lessons in the fifth or sixth grade, referred to as intervention groups, and students who did not—the control groups. The six evaluations we reviewed were based on three separate studies in three states— Colorado, Kentucky, and Illinois. Each of the six evaluations, conducted at intervals ranging from 2 to 10 years after the fifth or sixth grade students were initially surveyed, suggested that DARE had no statistically significant long-term effect on preventing illicit drug use. Five evaluations also reported on students’ attitudes about illicit drug use and other nonbehavioral measures and found no significant differences between the DARE and non-DARE students over the long term.

You may wonder why I care about DARE, but it's the only drug education that schools offer, and not only does it not work, it's woefully unacademic.

How many of these popular drugs have you heard of?

Marijuana, LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA (Ecstasy), ,Cocaine, Crack, Heroin, Crank, PCP,

How many of these popular drugs have you heard of?

GHB, Ketamine, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, 5-MeO-DIPT, 4-Acetoxy-DIPT, 2-CB, 2-CI, 2-CT-7, AMT, DXM, Salvia Divinorum, Meth-Cathinone.

Chances are your students are much more well informed than you, and even more likely, they're uninformed and taking the risks anyway.

And why not? Since it appears that the "science" the government is touting is the usual lies.

New York Times December 2, 2003

Research on Ecstasy Is Clouded by Errors
By Donald G. McNeil Jr.

In September, the journal Science issued a startling retraction. A primate study it published in 2002, with heavy publicity, warned that the amount of the drug Ecstasy that a typical user consumes in a single night might cause permanent brain damage.

It turned out that the $1.3 million study, led by Dr. George A. Ricaurte of Johns Hopkins University, had not used Ecstasy at all. His 10 squirrel monkeys and baboons had instead been injected with overdoses of methamphetamine, and two of them had died. The labels on two vials he bought in 2000, he said, were somehow switched. (Imagine that?) - {My comment}

The problem corrupted four other studies in his lab, forcing him to withdraw four other papers.

It was not the first time Dr. Ricaurte's lab was accused of using flawed studies to suggest that recreational drugs are highly dangerous. In previous years he was accused of publicizing doubtful results without checking them, and was criticized for research that contributed to a government campaign suggesting that Ecstasy made "holes in the brain."

But did you see any of this reported in your papers, or on CNN?

From October of 2002

The RAND Corporation's Drug Policy Research Center released a study Monday that casts grave doubt on the validity of the "gateway theory," the intuitive but unproven notion that the use of marijuana leads to the use of harder drugs. While the RAND researchers found links between marijuana use and the subsequent use of harder drugs, they determined that the "gateway theory" was bunk -- or in the more diplomatic terms of the study's lead author, Andrew Morral: "We've shown that the marijuana gateway effect is not the best explanation for the link between marijuana use and the use of harder drugs.

In January of 2003 the Mexican Army arrested the Tijuana office of the Mexican DEA, with five tons of marijuana. President Fox is calling for the disbanding of the entire Mexican DEA.

For all the drug news that's not reported, Go to DRC!