[explorer83]

The short term effects of many drugs seem harmless. Because they seem harmless, it makes the anti-drug messaging seem overblown. It's usually too late once the long term effects are noticed. I wish there was a better way to get that message through other than experience.

[grugagag]

Moderation is key. But there’s a scale to moderation that has to be learned as well.

[cmh89]

>I wish there was a better way to get that message through other than experience.

There is, puritanical American culture just wont do it. Abstinence only education, whether for sex or drug consumption doesn't work.

It's completely viable to talk to kids about risk factors for different drugs. When I was growing up they acted like marijuana and heroin were the same risk factors.

'Drugs are fun until they aren't' is something kids can understand. We should also talk about how people are different and some people can do recreational drugs and never have a problem and others can do the same amounts of drugs at first and develop an addiction.

[jonhohle]

Except abstinence education is shown to delay sexual activity [0] (and possibly drug activity). Normalizing potentially dangerous behavior under the assumption that it can be safer is not a replacement for saying you probably shouldn’t do it until you’re able to understand and handle the consequences.

0 - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

[vorpalhex]

> Abstinence only education, whether for sex or drug consumption doesn't work.

This line gets repeated a lot, with the implied assumption that since X doesn't work the solution must be to invert X.

That's incorrect.

You know how you dramatically reduce teen pregnancy? You increase their socio-economic status.

The fix to drug use is not to teach kids the best way to shoot heroin or how to drug test for fentanyl, anymore than the fix for teen pregnancy is practicing putting condoms on bananas.

[randomopining]

Which ones do you think this applies to? Long term effects

[dweymouth]

Ironically, the two main legal drugs (excluding caffeine) - tobacco and alcohol - have some of the worst long term effects. Others can have long term effects though, like MDMA is somewhat neurotoxic but not to a degree that matters with infrequent acute use, but it becomes very relevant if someone were to use it regularly.