Get Real: Misguided Drug Policies Ignore Common Sense

If you follow the word of Jesus, you know that alcohol makes a party better. One of his greatest miracles was turning water into wine. This point wasn't lost on Benjamin Franklin, who declared that beer was the proof that God loved us.

Time changes, but human nature doesn't. Every generation discovers drugs and other delinquent activities in one form or another, and every government administration and PTA fears it as the next Satanic take over, dismissing obvious patterns in our social development as evidence of decaying national morals.

It shouldn't come as a total shock then that a new study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has found that suburban high-school students are just as likely as their urban counterparts to have sex, smoke, drink and engage in illegal drug use.

Kids are kids wherever you go. Whether its bong hits in Bellevue or blunts in Wallingford, teenagers like to get high and it's going to stay that way. Drugs remain a constant, regardless of socioeconomic standing.

Different administrations approach the inevitable "drug epidemic" by various resource-draining methods. The most infamous is D.A.R.E., created in 1983 by Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates.

This national program places police officers into the unqualified role of mental-health counselors and educators, teaching students they have "the right to be happy" and they have "the right to say no!"

Unfortunately, D.A.R.E. fails to differentiate between the dangers of mild drugs, like pot, and killers, like heroin. D.A.R.E. treats all drugs as equals, which defies common sense and undermines the program's credibility because it is offering inaccurate information.

The U.S. General Accounting Office reported, "There is little evidence so far that [D.A.R.E. and other "resistance training" programs] have reduced the use of drugs by adolescents." The Justice Department-sponsored study by the Research Triangle Institute found that D.A.R.E. has a "limited to essentially nonexistent effect on drug use." This may be one reason why so many schools nationwide have dropped the D.A.R.E. program.

While millions of tax dollars and private contributions continue to pour in to save the souls of America's children with misguided drug policies, politicians and parents continue to ignore that they are barking up the wrong tree: failure is failure. It's time to take a realistic approach to drugs and the adolescent mind and accept experimentation instead of hiding from it.

As long as drugs are taboo and sex is dirty, curious minds will be intrigued; this is common knowledge. What's important is how parents and authorities choose to handle this reality. If they continue to act shocked that kids are having sex and getting high, they will continue to exhaust tax money on worthless social programs and moral advertisements.

Parents can try to instill fear in their kids, but that only produces resentment. It forces the partying spirit to go underground like a Prohibition bootlegger. Kids will party and parents would do well to work with it instead of essentially encouraging their kids to drive home drunk.

And according to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development study, 71 percent of parents need to consider this at some point.

Our role models and leaders can serve as valuable reminders that drugs and drinking aren't necessarily prerequisites for failure. Take our president, for example. He's a functional human being and a born-again Christian, despite his past cocaine abuse.

Free-spirited or loose cannon, teens are going to do what they want. It's a reality we would do well to accept. Parents can only do their best to raise their kids so they can make their own smart and safe decisions.

I'm not sure what the author is suggesting. Does he want us to just tell our kids it's okay to drink, do drugs and have sex? That sounds crazy to me.

But I do understand to some extent his point. Kids are out there having sex, drinking, doing drugs and so on just like when I was a kid. I'd be dishonest if I said I didn't do all of these things as a teenager. Do I want my daughters doing any of these things? Heck no. I'd just as soon they never do any of it, except maybe the sex part when they turn thirty and I let them get married, and even then I'd be more comfortable with artificial insemination. ;-)

All kidding aside, I suspect that my children may very well engage in some of these activities, even though I "prohibit" them from doing so, and there really isn't much I can do about it. I can't keep them locked up all the time. I can't go with them everywhere they go. All I can do is try to teach them to develop good instincts about what is right and what is wrong and what is a good idea and what is a bad idea. I want them to think for themselves and be good decision makers, pick the right friends and avoid getting themselves into compromising situations. But I acknowledge that they are children and have and will make mistakes, just like the rest of us.

I agree with the author that we need to try to teach our children to make smart and safe decisions. I also agree that we should avoid scare tactics and we should make an effort not to lie to our children about things like drugs or exaggerate the problems they cause. I think that kind of crying wolf is a sure fire way to lose all credibility with our kids and drive them toward the pro-drug crowd who tell them things like marijuana and even ecstasy are harmless, nearly risk-free drugs. But I still think that we should make efforts to discourage our kids from doing drugs. DARE may not be the answer, but I think honest education about things like drinking and drugs and sex is important, both at school and at home. Abstinence should be the main message but the programs should take into account that many of the older kids are already doing these things and so while making the abstinence message kids ought to be informed of the dangers of having unprotected sex, sharing needles, mixing downers with alcohol and so on.

My personal feelings on all of this are that I would be really happy if my kids waited for marriage before having sex and if they never drank or did drugs. That would be nice, but I no that statistically, realistically, things probably won't turn out that way. Knowing this, it is my hope that my kids make an effort to wait as long as they can before doing any of these things and that when they do any of these things they'll try to be careful and not go overboard. Odds are, even if they do fool around with any of these dangerous behaviors, they'll come out of it okay like most of the rest of us.

I agree with the author that we need to try to teach our children to make smart and safe decisions. I also agree that we should avoid scare tactics and we should make an effort not to lie to our children about things like drugs or exaggerate the problems they cause. I think that kind of crying wolf is a sure fire way to lose all credibility with our kids [...] I still think that we should make efforts to discourage our kids from doing drugs. DARE may not be the answer, but I think honest education about things like drinking and drugs and sex is important, both at school and at home.

Ditto!

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