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.
Marijuana is not a gateway drug.
Having to deal with a drug dealer that wants to also sell you actually addictive drugs is the gateway.
Legalize pot, sell it at the grocery store, and you will watch the number of addicts in general fall precipitously. I guarantee it.
Weird how cigarettes and alcohol are not ‘gateway drugs.’
That’s because from a health perspective, alcohol in particular is an “end state drug”. It’s what you die with. It ruins you. Not as fast as heroine, but just as thoroughly.
So if I just occasionally have a beer with dinner does that mean I could also enjoy a bit of light recreational heroine for dessert?
light recreational heroine
The best dessert.
Don’t forget shampoo!
My D.A.R.E. officer made sure we all knew that shampoo is a drug because it’s a chemical compound that physically affects our bodies. I definitely had fewer issues with drugs after learning that I was already a ‘drug user’.
That’s actually a pretty good way to think about it though. Drugs are just chemical compounds and different compounds have different effects on the body.
Are you sure that D.A.R.E officer was not secretly cool?
D.A.R.E. has been proven to increase drug use, so I don’t think it was just him. The entire ‘scare tactic’ just doesn’t work.
Yeah, I really wonder who writes these, and what their outlook on their job is. They have to know that the content has some pretty strong omissions or false inclusions there for political reasons.
The “gateway drug” thing was a lie in 1985 and its a lie now.
Having to deal with a drug dealer that wants to also sell you actually addictive drugs
Clearly marijuana has some serious kind of habituation, and it’s equally clear that many people that use marijuana are problem users. Addictive? No, not by any strict definition of addiction, since you won’t suffer serious adverse effects if you stop. OTOH, I’ve known at least as many problem marijuana users as problem drinkers
The question isn’t whether Marijuana is habit forming. Obviously for some percentage it is. The question is whether Marijuana use in and of itself encourages or preface additional drug use. My position is that it does not and by legalizing Marijuana we would find that it is the interaction with black market drug dealers which correlates instead.
The question is whether Marijuana use in and of itself encourages or preface additional drug use.
I would argue that in many ways it does. Marijuana is–or was–illegal. Alcohol is legal, but age restricted. If you are willing to use a substance that is (was) entirely illegal, you are more likely going to be willing to try other drugs that are legitimately addictive, because you’ve already crossed one of the major hurdles. If alcohol had been illegal for the same amount of time that marijuana had been, then I would agree that alcohol was likely a gateway drug as well.
I’m in favor of de-scheduling marijuana entirely. But I think that it’s disingenuous for people to act as though there weren’t serious problems with chronic and underage marijuana use.
You’re saying that it has nothing to do with marijuana itself that make it a gateway drug, only that we’ve made it illegal.
That means anything we make illegal is a ‘gateway X’.
If you are willing to use a substance that is (was) entirely illegal, you are more likely going to be willing to try other drugs that are legitimately addictive, because you’ve already crossed one of the major hurdle
It’s honestly rather ludicrous to still see 60’s propaganda being parroted. You’re on the internet, dude. There’s no need for you to be that ignorant.
I bet it’s a useful plant and that’s why people use it daily.
Oh, guess what, it’s time to take my meds, I’ll be back after a few bong hits before I go back to work.
I wonder what the stats in Canada look like now.
Weed is a gateway drug to the fridge.
I have never in my life heard anyone actually call weed “dope.”
“Dope” is heroin, and its derivatives and relations.
I heard it called that back around 1985.
I do all the time and my son makes fun of me for it. That’s how we rolled in the late 70’s/early 80’s
Old crew checking in. I still call it dope, and get side eyed for it.
Yeah i only heard it called that ironically or as an in joke
In pineapple express they call it “the dopest dope I ever smoked”… But I now realize that movie is almost 20 years old.
Dope is 100% also used for weed. Maybe just less common for the younger gens.
Smokin’ on the finest dope, ay-ay-ay-ah
I get the sense that the author hasn’t tried many or any of these substances and is trotting out the standard line. I didn’t see alcohol, cigarettes and Oxycontin mentioned.
If we’re going to have an adult conversation about addictive substances we should first talk about sugar and junk food. We should also discuss the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle, lack of healthcare and community, ignorance of mental health, motor vehicles, pollution, the criminal justice system, Judeo-Christian culture and being a person of colour. Those will form the major risk factors for human health.
we should first talk about sugar and junk food
Absolutely not. Cigarettes are way way way more dangerous than sugar and junk-food
False. Heart disease is the number one killer.
The fact that LSD and shrooms are in the same category as PCP.
GHB and rufies are used recreationally, not just for date rape.
The purpose of drug education programs in schools is to scare kids, not to genuinely educate kids so they can make informed decisions in their own lives. They also can’t cover everything because the education system is fucked and drugs would require a semester to teach to an appropriate degree and serve harm reduction. They also need to not tell kids enough because it could backfire and make drugs seem interesting to try. Try making DMT not sound awesome.
From what I hear the best way to make dmt sound not awesome is to describe the taste
Used corn oil, tortillas, and a hint of a taste like new car air conditioning smells with an aftertaste of a little bit of brake fluid. Yeah, I can kind of see how that would be off-putting but you won’t mind it and you can just swallow it with a liter of black current juice and spend some quality time with machine elves instead of vaping it.
The taste aspect of DMT is like a partner who is 10/10 that will blow your mind in every way but who has farts that smell like a rotting dumpster of seafood and offal on fire outside of a wastewater treatment facility. You can’t just write them off because of one manageable issue.
Yep that certainly is exactly the bullshit I was taught in the Midwest.
I wish schools were able to use the categories of “do your research” “probably a bad idea” and “definitely a bad idea”. There are drugs kids need to be warned about and by being honest about marijuana and lsd you build credibility when you tell them to never try opiates and that poppers may not ruin your life, but like there’s never a situation where they’re a good idea.
We also need to be honest about how we got into our opioid epidemic and how most heroin addicts got hooked after getting prescribed.
Kids are stupid but they aren’t stupid how us adults think they are. When we lie to them they remember to discount everything we say, even to not smoke cigarettes.
Well said. I made sure I told her all about the opioid epidemic and she already understands how shitty our healthcare system is.
Where is the alcohol section that causes probably the most deaths per year?
It was in a separate lesson, which was similarly filled with bullshit.
Your child is lucky to have you as a parent.
I’m glad I can be around to tell her what is and is not bullshit or propaganda. Even when it’s about alcohol and cigarettes. They don’t even discuss medication options for alcohol and nicotine addictions despite those being real options that work well for some people.
Did they even tell her about alcohol? I didn’t see it in there at all
They did. It was a separate lesson. It was also full of nonsense.
And they’re making a fucking mess of the pharmacological and social definitions of “drug”. It’s the propaganda version of that “ackshyually tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable” brain-rotting idiocy.
Depressant, stimulant, those refer to the pharmacological activity; it’ll include even things not socially considered as drugs, such as caffeine (stimulant) and alcohol (depressant). In this sense marijuana is not its own class, it’s THC is a depressant.
That “club drugs” category is a fucking mess in both definitions. Ketamine is an anaesthetic, thus likely a depressant; ecstasy is mostly a stimulant with weak hallucinogen properties, pharmacologically they’re nothing alike. And socially they’re closer to caffeine (as things that you ingest willingly) than to date rape drugs (things that people give you against your consent).
And even the division in social drugs depends on usage. Marijuana for example can be used for clinical or recreative reasons; abuse is of course bad, but frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if most marijuana smokers had better lungs than I do (I don’t smoke weed but I smoke tobacco - nicotine is a
depressantstimulant BTW). Same deal with the date rape drugs, alcohol could be used as one.Aaaaah, sorry for the rant. What I want to convey is that yeah, I get why this infuriates you. It infuriated me too.
Not only can alcohol be used as a date rape drug, it’s the most common one. It’s safer for the assailant to give you a stronger drink than you think you’re getting than to give you something like roofies. Additionally bartenders will gladly do it as it’s not uncommon for someone to want a double.
Do they go on to mention any negative effects?
I love the idea that this isn’t a smear campaign but a promotional one haha. You’re right this article mostly reads “Apart from some shakes and wanting more later, these are all a great time” lmao.
Impaired mobility on weed? Then why am I setting top rank scores in project muse while high as fuck?
They put pcp alongside shrooms and LSD. That’s insane.
The “gateway” drug thing was taught to me through DARE in the 90s. But has been confirmed propoganda for decades. Calling Cannabis (marijuana is not the proper name) a “gateway” drug is like saying water or air are “gateway” drugs. Sure, a crack head has probably smoked weed, but that isn’t what got them into crack.
I would guess that these materials are, either, very old or they categorize cannabis differently because it is so common. It doesn’t help that it is illegal in half the country and legal in the other half. So any state with cannabis not, at least, decriminalized will still have the talking points for the 1930s.
Thankfully, she knows from her father, who uses cannabis medicinally, that it is not a “gateway drug.” Especially since the pain I am using it to treat now was one which a doctor originally tried and failed to treat by throwing multiple opioids at it and I’m not doing fentanyl today despite that. Two days of withdrawal was a bitch though.
I’m glad to hear you are off the opioid train. Have lost family members to it and my father is currently been on them for years. I tried to get him on the THC train, he even has a medical card, but he claims to not like the effects. I live in a recently legal state so I’m waiting until I can show him a store with a wide variety to try. I know there is some strain that will help with his pain and suffering without the effects he didn’t like.
I’m luckier than others in that I hate the effects of opioids, so unless it is actually doing some pain killing (fentanyl did wonders when I was in the ER with kidney stones), I just wouldn’t want it in my system.
But I also know that there are plenty of people it does work for who use it because they are legitimately in pain and either were hooked on them by a doctor and can’t get off or just can’t afford an alternative other than to score something illegally to solve their pain issues due to our capitalist healthcare system.
I realize you have to simplify things for kids sometimes, but this is not the way to do it.
Seriously. How undereducated is the general population to still be willfully ignorant that “marijuana” is literally BS Spanish “Mary Jane” and not what anyone prior to the utter failure that still is the “War on Drugs” has ever called any part of the plant? FFS. 🤷🏼♂️
I remember my old boss asking me what the effects of cannabis were. I was like “which cannabis? Indica, sativa, high CBD, high thc, etc” Cannabis is like wine, but different strains have different effects. There are stains that I use at night that leave me happy and couch bound, and there are strains I use on a weekend morning that make me clean my entire house
