I feel like pure demonization is such an easy path to distrust and abuse. For the longest time I didn’t know the difference between even weed and other drugs, just that it was “bad”, weed might as well have been crack. I sure as shit didn’t know the harder drugs make you feel unimaginably good and that this in specific was the danger.
I actually had a bad LSD trip that went worse than it should have due to this demonization, I couldn’t stop thinking of all the times I was told or overheard as a kid that such drugs drive you insane. I knew beforehand what I was doing and what that would entail, but it didn’t matter once I had jumped in, the paranoia from years of growing up hearing such things won.
For sure raise awareness, for sure drive home the notion that certain drugs will fuck your life up, but they need to seriously sit down and explain the nuances between all of them, they need to explain risks and dangers (the real ones, not the propagandist talking points) as well as the effects, they need to compare them to alcohol, tobacco, coffee, hell even food since even that is addictive. People will try stuff, they better try stuff with an informed perspective and know which ones are too much to consider.
Generally they don’t really mention it outside special occasions, and then it’s just generally “drugs bad, don’t do drugs”.
I feel like pure demonization is such an easy path to distrust and abuse. For the longest time I didn’t know the difference between even weed and other drugs, just that it was “bad”, weed might as well have been crack. I sure as shit didn’t know the harder drugs make you feel unimaginably good and that this in specific was the danger.
I actually had a bad LSD trip that went worse than it should have due to this demonization, I couldn’t stop thinking of all the times I was told or overheard as a kid that such drugs drive you insane. I knew beforehand what I was doing and what that would entail, but it didn’t matter once I had jumped in, the paranoia from years of growing up hearing such things won.
For sure raise awareness, for sure drive home the notion that certain drugs will fuck your life up, but they need to seriously sit down and explain the nuances between all of them, they need to explain risks and dangers (the real ones, not the propagandist talking points) as well as the effects, they need to compare them to alcohol, tobacco, coffee, hell even food since even that is addictive. People will try stuff, they better try stuff with an informed perspective and know which ones are too much to consider.