One of the things that the drug reform movement has faced throughout its history is the pernicious and constant attempts to silence any efforts to provide honest education about illicit drugs. To even discuss illicit drugs in any realistic way was painted as a an attempt to encourage kids to become druggies.
There was even one time that DrugWarRant got unintentionally embroiled in a local Congressional race and the charge was leveled that since I had a link to Erowid, my site was a danger to the community as young kids could follow that link and learn how to do drugs!
Sometimes these attempts get downright hilarious.
Check out the kerfuffle generated by the Daily Mail over a botanical exhibit.
Kew Gardens storm over ‘Intoxication Season’ which includes talks on mind-altering plants
It’s really quite a nice little educational program at the Royal Botanical Gardens, which will include live plants that can be used to produce both legal and illicit drugs, with a series of lectures about the plants, their history, and their properties.
The Daily Mail makes it seem like the end of civilization.
But last night campaign groups said that Kew, whose patron is Prince Charles, was ‘failing to safeguard youngsters from the dangers of drugs’.
Elizabeth Burton-Phillips, chief executive of the charity DrugFAM, said: ‘The literature from Kew Gardens reads like an invitation for children to come and experiment with drugs. I am sure these people are all experts in their field but I deal with families who have lost children to drugs and my son died as a result of them.
‘The organisers are behaving extremely irresponsibly and not safeguarding youngsters. It’s awful a publicly funded organisation is using its money for such a festival.’
I’ll never forget my shock, double-take and immediate obtaining of the book, The Golden Guide To Hallucinogenic Plants” (1976) by Richard Evans Schultes. It was right next to the Golden Guide to North American Trees, the Golden Guide to Camping, and other wholesome Golden Guides. I was in 7th grade or so and thus much appreciated a truthful guide to the subject – from an authoritative source (?) like the good ol’ Golden Guides. (Heck, I’d never heard of Yage, or Telepathine, or even Coleus before that.) Coleus turned out to be dubious, but salvia divinorum more than made up for that bum steer, when I encountered salvia 20 years later or so…
What will the Elizabeth Buffoon-Wallops of the world do when they encounter ayahuasca analogues, or datura stramonium, I wonder?
That’s easy; their heads will ‘splode.
… because ignorant children never do drugs, right?
I can remember anti-drug exhibits long ago as a kid in which the local police had the bright idea of creating a display case of real drugs showing what had been confiscated in raids and arrests. There were examples of all types of pills, uppers, downers, as well as LSD, heroin, coke and so forth. The apparent objective was to give kids an idea of what drugs looked like so they could avoid them. Someone broke into a building displaying the glass case filled with drug samples and stole it. That was the end of police drug exhibits.
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Wow, that sounds like the time that Mr. Mackey passed around a sample of marijuana to the children so they’d know what it looked like. One of them pocketed the sample so naturally one thing led to another. Before you could ask the age old question, “why the heck is my bicycle floating” he got fired and ended up tripping on acid. If I’m not overlooking something that was the first time we ever heard him say, “drugs are bad, mmm-kay?”
Regardless of any of that it was the best metaphorical graphic for tripping on acid ever. IMHO of course.
What they have today is a briefcase with a molded plastic inside painted in a facsimile display that from a few feet away looks like the drugs once exhibited how you describe. Another byproduct of the WOD. Ten (10) years ago I heard at an anti-drug rally the drug display case cost the group $350.
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Will somebody some day tell me whether the prohibitionists have to spend time figuring out how to sound just plain daffy when they speak or if it just flows out of their collective mouths as if it’s just second nature? Also, just how far into their fantasy land do they have to go to reach its outer limits?
Without further ado I’m putting this one in the “can the prohibitionists ever hope to outdo this particularly piece of sycophantic big bang babble?” category:
fully informed citizens: not a good idea for authoritarian states. i’m not fully informed, but i am lucky not to have been victimized like some on this couch.
Pissing off the Daily Mail sounds like pissing off Fox News. Wear it like a badge of honor. Encouraging that the commenters sounded like they don’t have much patience for that kind of hooey.
FIBRE PLANTS — Hemp, The Children’s Encyclopedia, 1909
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/indust/CHILD_EN.HTM
Collaterally Damaged Kids
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/887
Drug Worriers use women and children as shields to hide behind. Straight tortured drug users. Now its former owners want you to oppose medical marijuana. Calvina Fay is the Executive Director of Drug Free America Foundation and Save Our Society From Drugs (S.O.S.) From 1976-1985 it was known as Straight, Inc. and had a reputation for abusing kids as a drug rehabilitation program. Mel Sembler and his wife Betty founded Straight, Inc. In 1985 it changed its name to Straight Foundation, Inc. in order to protect its money and its principals from civil suits. In 1995 it was changed again to Drug Free America Foundation. DFAF is a national and international drug policy think tank and provider of services for drug free work places.
Cannabis Rescue Medication in action
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=721753387847681
The Assassins of Youth: DARE †FRCn PDFA
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/505
Partnership for a Drug-Free America Sources of Funding from 1988-91 as extracted from Federal Tax Returns by the Washington Hemp Education Network, also from the Los Angeles Times:
LIQUOR FIRMS
Anheuser-Busch, Joseph E. Seagrams & Sons, Inc., Coors Brewing Co., Hiram Walker-Allied Vintners, Inc., Stroh Brewing Co.,
TOBACCO COMPANIES:
Brown & Williamson, RJR Nabisco, Inc., RJ Reynolds, Lorillard, Inc., American Brands, Phillip Morris,
PHARMACEUTICAL FIRMS
J. Seward Johnson, Sr. Charitable Trusts, Du Pont, Proctor and Gamble Fund, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Merck Foundation, Hoffman-LaRoche,
OTHER COMMERCIAL DRUG MANUFACTURERS
Perry Drug Stores, Inc., The Pfizer Foundation, Inc., Rohrer Group, Inc., Schering-Plough Foundation, Inc., Smith-Kline Beecham, Inc., Sterling Drug Co., Johnson and Johnson manufactures Haldo
Leading Anti-Marijuana Academics Are Paid by Painkiller Drug Companies
http://www.vice.com/read/leading-anti-marijuana-academics-are-paid-by-painkiller-drug-companies
“Several generations of high school students have grown up ignoring and disbelieving everything they’ve heard from government and police about drugs, including information that was factual and valid, because they discovered for themselves that most of what has been taught to them was simply not true.â€
Ann Shulgin, PhD, Therapist and Author, Lafayette, CA,
at the DPF Conference, November 1996
We know that education leads to all sorts of undesirable traits. If they learn about mind-altering substances, they want to TRY them. If we teach them about their bodies, they’ll have sex for goodness sake! If we teach them to think critically, they question authority!!!
The end of civilization indeed.