If you walk into any 4th-grade classroom in the Chicago area and ask the kids what they know about drugs, 25 to 30 enthusiastic hands will shoot up with knowledge that far surpasses that of most adults.
They will be able to name all the various categories of abusive substances, including caffeine, identify devices used to consume these drugs, list many effects of a wide variety of drugs and describe the power of peer pressure in great detail.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for keeping kids off heavy drugs.
But I feel the way to do it is to not cram as much information as possible in such young minds.
Children go from fantasizing about recess to thinking about several slang terms used to identify all kinds of illegal substances on the streets. Just hearing a child utter the words “nose candy” or “angel dust” is absurd and heartbreaking.
These programs offer so much unnecessary information, such as where to obtain drugs and the different ways they are consumed, that it will make kids want to experiment.
Valuable tax money is being wasted on complicated anti-drug programs, like D.A.R.E., when it could be used to actually keep drugs out of America in the first place. The school districts have gone completely overboard with this line of education.
It cannot be argued that most kids are always striving for attention and excitement.
When they hear parents, teachers, and police officers preach on and on about drugs, their first thought, after thoroughly absorbing the exciting new information, is to rebel and disobey their elders.
So as it turns out, anti-drug programs may not be as glorious as some see them.
In reality, they could actually be negatively affecting the attempt to keep kids off drugs.
They either terrify them or motivate them to experiment.
Something positive must be done to fight the war on drugs, and soon.
