Submitted 1 week ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6d921419-0b08-4a56-ad36-5f2f90244481.png
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.
Weed is a gateway drug to the fridge.
lmao
What specifically stands out to you as a ridiculous bit of probaganda?
It’s certainly not the most accurate or clinical, and some of the categories are a bit “eh”, but nothing popped out to me that I would describe so strongly.
If nothing else, it’s a lot more objective and grounded in reality than what they gave me in that dumb dare program. Might be why my reaction is just “close enough”.
Marijuana being a gateway drug.
Also being the most abused drug. I’d say that would be caffeine. There are more people who take caffeine daily than cannabis. But this seems to be about “bad” drugs, not “good” drugs.
It doesn’t say that I’m the text. It literally says that it is CALLED a gateway drug because of what SOME people do.
Yup, that’s a good one. Gateway drug notion is generally iffy at the absolute most generous.
This one wasn’t as “smoking the weed will make you do heroin and die” as others, just “some people do other things after doing this one”, but it’s still not super worth mentioning.
That was the only thing that popped out to me.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. It’s close enough for the target audience. Doesn’t go the any extreme.
Most of the information in the hallucinogenic section is incorrect.
Hrm, I always thought it was just a mis-name for PTSD after an excessive dose.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep…
It looks like there’s at least a degree of clinical validation to it being a combo of PTSD and “sometimes colors stay funny for a while”.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of “the entire war on drugs, but particularly pot and heroin”?
That’s what I thought was an invention by the Nixon administration.
I agree, but I don’t think D.A.R.E. was dumb. It was just difficult to hear the personal opinions that officers had of people who had been on particular drugs that are so often used in a hospital setting. Between the time I was an infant to the time I was ten, I had already been hospitalized for various illnesses and injuries that sometimes required hospital grade medications. Try telling a third grade kid that she is a bad person because the hospital put her on intravenous pain medication after having both her radius and ulna completely broken in a fall from the school’s playground equipment.
On a side note, after so many hospitalizations in my life, I absolutely hate people who use drugs for fun.
Mind your own business and you’ll have a happier life, less hateful.
Wait, so you think dare wasn’t dumb, but you have specific negative memories associated with it mischarecterizing drug users due to your legitimate usage?
I would call a program that makes children feel bad for going to the doctor “dumb”.
Your dislike of people who use drugs because you went to the hospital a lot is quite strange. I’m not sure why those would be related.
Did they put you in the hospital, or make a police officer come to your school and tell you you were a bad person?
Given your experience and the way they made you feel from the practitioners’ sheer ignorant and biased approach I would have thought you’d definitely be the first to call the program “dumb” as the very least of the criticisms to be levelled at it.
I agree too. Just the classifications alone seem close enough, and GHB is absolutely a ‘club’ drug that also happens to be a date rape drug. Back in my heyday, I knew several people that would use it recreationally when we’d go out to an EDM show (or in the hours after we got back to the crash pad to keep the party going).
I didn’t read the whole thing, so I can comment on specific content like ‘weed being a gateway’ drug, but that’s been disproven time and time again and this type of propaganda is common from schools and the government as they’re bound by archaic laws to portray drugs in such a way.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
I buy THC drinks online from 3Chi. I haven’t had an urge to try anything harder (in fact, I’m a bit scared of anything that might affect my heart (aside from booze becaus3 we all do at least one very stupid thing), and the only thing I do want to try but only with a good support group around is shrooms).
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.
As in; when this was written…
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.
In pineapple express they call it “the dopest dope I ever smoked”… But I now realize that movie is almost 20 years old.
Yeah i only heard it called that ironically or as an in joke
Dope is 100% also used for weed. Maybe just less common for the younger gens.
Smokin’ on the finest dope, ay-ay-ay-ah
The fact that LSD and shrooms are in the same category as PCP.
I’ve always seen it classed as a more of a dissociative. If it were actually in the same class as shrooms and LSD then I’d have tried it by now.
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
I mean yes but at least in the US the latter two are overwhelmingly more common.
False. Heart disease is the number one killer.
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.
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.
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
The fact it still teaches the “gateway drug” shit tells me it’s outdated as hell.
Hmm, I went looking around and it seems opinions are mixed?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_drug_effect#Histo… suggests one study found a causal link, but another meta-study found a correlation without enough evidence to indicate a causal link?
When you gotta hang out with people (who most likely do/sell other drugs), no risk that you’re going to get an offer to try something else.
I’d argue that if there is any gateway effect, it’s solely related to the propaganda taught to the public that tasks apart once you’ve actually tried some of them. I don’t think there’s anything inherent about the drugs themselves that would drive you to try anything stronger. It’s more that the misinformation makes people think “if they lied to me about this, what else were they lying about?” after trying something like weed and realizing it doesn’t turn you into a psychopath or make you want to jump out of a window.
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.
The whole topic of drugs could easily be covered in 30 minutes. The only thing people under 18 need to know is this:
There are a large variety of different recreational drugs, each of which make you feel a different way, and which come with their own set of different risks and benefits
At some point when you're older it may be reasonable for you to try some particular drugs, but there are some drugs which are never safe for anyone at any age
No drugs are safe for you to do yet. Your brain is still in a developing phase, and drugs that might be safe for you to do later will be very harmful to you at this age. Even though taking a drug might make you feel good in the very short term moment, it very likely could make your growing brain become depressed as soon as you come down from the drug, and this can become intense sadness that you feel for the rest of your life.
So for now just know that drugs is a complex topic that you can learn more about later when you're older, but for now the details don't matter because all drugs will be harmful to you right now while your brain is still growing
2.1 before you do try something, find out how to test for contaminants/counterfeits. You don’t want to do battery acid
Or how about this:
The body is a super complex chemical eco-system. Messing with it is understandably super difficult, if you do not want to cause damage. All drugs have side effects. Known or otherwise. Using drugs for any reason is like throwing a funnily shaped wrench in to a factory you do not fully understand. It always causes problems. In medical science we try to figure out what type of wrench causes the least destruction while providing some benefit. We then weigh the benefits against the downsides. Leave these decisions to someone that has dedicated their life to this science. Let them make educated guesses for you. Instead of you just guessing. Generally, don’t use any drug unless you have to. Stop as soon as is recommended by you doctor. Assume that any drug you use, will have a permanent, accumulative detrimental effect on the body. Just to be safe.
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.
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 depressant 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.
I could have sworn nicotine was technically a stimulant because it has vasoconstrictive properties.
And I don't know anyone who has ever put off going to sleep in order to take more depressants.
Nicotine is absolutely classified as a stimulant.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a user misclassify it—I imagine it has something to do with smoking or dipping mitigating withdrawal (thus relaxing) more than the drug’s actual effects.
I fucked it up - thanks for pointing it out, fixed it. (I switched them because smoking a cig relaxes me quite a bit.)
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.
They put pcp alongside shrooms and LSD. That’s insabe.
Do they go on to mention any negative effects?
brb, going to the club with my friends so we can do steroids
At least it’s broadly kind of informative in description of some of the categories before the ‘continued’ section. That may seem a low bar but I guess efforts to educate on this topic have set such a drastically low bar in decades past that it’s encouraging to see it lifted slightly off the floor. The categorisation scheme takes a bit of a nosedive when they get to marijuana which for some reason has its own category, also for all the drugs and categories they describe they make the mistake of failing to describe the effects that make people want to use the drugs in the first place. I can see why they might be hesitant to do that, you don’t want to actively encourage people to use the drugs, but I remember when getting similar lessons on the topic thinking that it was an obvious omission because it’s hardly like people took the drugs, repeatedly, because of how much they enjoyed the “impairment” especially as I has my own first hand experience running directly counter to it. The failure to address the positive sensations taking such drugs produces that have caused people throughout all of human history to seek drugs out, damages the credibility of the information since it clearly sought to discourage at the cost of objectivity.
Impaired mobility on weed? Then why am I setting top rank scores in project muse while high as fuck?
Shit! I totally forgot that weed is a gateway drug.
Quick someone get me some black tar heroin!
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
It's better than D.A.R.E. which is what a lot of us got.
YOU EVER SUCK DICK FOR WEED? BOO THIS MAN BOOOOOOO!!!
This reads like an ai response. The first part is reasonably accurate, much more then my own classes thats didnt differentiate at all.
The continued part is a gptchat tell I think someone continued with “write another section on weed and club drugs like x y”
Its another tell that this section 2 is alot more unhinged then the first.
Here’s a great lesson for your daughter: don’t believe allg the shit they tell her at school.
Decades ago, my school's drug info was similar: every drug had a single entry ('euphoria') in the Pros column and a massive list (ending with death) for the Cons column.
It's propaganda to support the war on us and the legal slavery of 1% of the whole population. It's not education
Seems mostly correct to me. What’s the problem with it?
Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website 1 week ago
The people who blabber incessantly about weed being a gateway drug are the exact REASON that I agree with them, but we VERY much disagree on the specifics.
Think of it this way:
Every adult in your life has told you that weed is JUST AS BAD as heroin and cocain and meth. You hear it repeated ad nauseum, ESPECIALLY if you were in DARE.
Now one day someone you have known for a long time offers you some because “it’s not that bad, trust me you’ll be fine” and they go ahead and take a puff or twelve. Turns out it’s not that bad. They were fine after some initial uncoordinated attempts at doing something.
So if weed is this interesting, maybe heroin isn’t that bad either?
Yeah turns out heroin IS that bad, and lumping it in with weed is like tossing the kindergarten bully into a maxsec prison.
So yeah, it’s only a “gAtEwAy dRuG” because you fucks lied for decades and made false equivalence of things and taught kids they can’t trust you.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Turned out, the gateway drug was tobacco…
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6754186/
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Arguably one of the worst drugs to be taking. Death is slow and agonizingly painful. The addiction is deep seeded. The high is very minor, like you see me going out on heroin you know I’ve experienced things your your greatest orgasm could never compare too. Smoking, I got to like, stand outside for 5 mins.
tourist@lemmy.world 1 week ago
While drunk, I got insane cravings for cocaine and nicotine
While high, I get insane cravings for pizza and Tame Impala
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I just get hang overs.
Weed doesn’t hit like it use to. I think weed/stress and responsibility is a bad combo.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’ll agree but sooner or later everyone is going to make the leap its just a matter of how far they think the fall is.
Say we start thinking about weed the same way we think about alcohol now. Ok but there is molly, mushrooms, LSD, and ketamine that can all easily step into the space that weed had occupied. Say we discrimininlize all that too. Now people understand how mood altering substances work and aren’t afraid them. Does herion seem more accessible now?
I’m not saying a tier system is good and maybe society is just fundamentally flawed in the way it thinks about mind altering substances. Some how though, we need to show people before they learn the hard way, that substance abuse has lasting adverse effects including death.