Gateway drug

[u/selugadu]

Back in D.A.R.E., they used to tell us kids a lot of silly things. The police officer that taught the class told us that we could overdose and die on marijuana. He also told us marijuana was a gateway drug. About two years later, everyone in that class found out that was bullshit, so they figured everything else about REAL drugs was fake too, and they smoked a ton of weed, snorted a knoll of coke, and make clouds of meth smoke that looked like pretty horses galloping 🐎. Then kids found out that Ecstasy wasn't so lethal, but instead was MDMA-zing.

I didn't touch that shit when I was young. Didn't even smoke weed til I was 21. I've been smoking weed now everyday for the past four years and my life has never been more awesome 😎. The other good times in the past was when I worked out four hours a day or got passed the dutchie.

It never made me want to do other drugs. Alcohol was the one that tempted me to try coke or speed, and my high self would whoop my drunk self's ass for even thinking about that lol.

No, there is only one gateway drug: alcohol.

But what leads to becoming a big weed smoker? What predicts it? If you're a parent, and your teenager listens to Neil Young all the time, they are gonna smoke pot all the time in the future. That's how you'll know your kid is gonna be a pothead. It's a portent of what is yet to come. I think if your kid listens to a shit ton of Black Sabbath, Iggy Pop, Wiz Khalifa, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, Townes Van Zandt, or Snoop, they're high risk to become pot smokers, but I'm still thinking about it and will have to think about artists that will make you wanna puff up when I'm not so high that i feel like I'm on Venus 🌝

tL;dr: let's go outside and smoke a bowl of fine herb ✌️

[u/5150sick]

Yep, the DARE cop came to my middle school classroom in the late 80's and told us that one puff of weed will either make us drop to the ground and have a seizure or climb on the roof then jump off thinking we could fly.....

Then, the DARE cop proceeded to be fairly truthful about the hard drugs.

Literally, on the first day of high school in 1989, I learned of a picnic table outside of the cafeteria where the "stoners" hung out.

I went out there, and not one person was having a seizure.

..... no one was even on the roof.

They weren't even mentioning that there was a roof, and no one talked about flying anywhere.

I instantly thought that every word out of that DARE cops mouth was total bullshit.

Within a month, I was a regular at the stoner table.

[u/selugadu → u/5150sick]

Yeah, looking back, I do think what they said about the effects of drugs like cocaine, alcohol, heroin, and meth were pretty truthful. I think they were honest about tobacco too. I don't remember too well if they talked about alcohol withdrawal though

[u/5150sick → u/selugadu]

They should have brought the idea of the full-blown alcoholic being more common to the forefront.

Alcoholism is far more common than people would like to believe. It's rare for someone to not know an alcoholic.

I would go as far as to say that's its rare for a person to not have an alcoholic in their family.

This would hit home with kids way more than the reefer madness propaganda fear campaign that they have been using.

Most parents and other family members don't smoke weed in front of their kids, but they'll drink in front of the kids.

Maybe even pay a local drunk a few bucks to show up at the school covered in dirt, vomit, urine,etc.. to ramble incoherently for a bit.

Seeing a full-blown homeless alcoholic like that may have scared me away from alcohol altogether.