This segment unfortunately lost some information to unrecoverable problems with the sound (as in, the wind noise was just too much to fix).  There’s enough to work with and get this short video from, but I feel like some important things were missed as a result.  Parts one and three are much longer and more comprehensive, and either way I hope that you watch this video.  The additional comments here are meant to enhance the information there, not replace it.

One of those things is how dishonesty about drugs education causes distrust and rejection among young people.  As I note in the video, we have developed the bad habit of treating all recreational drugs as equivalent, and that is simply not a position supported by science…or by the objective experience of using those drugs, either in terms of their immediate effects on the mind or their long-term addictive potential and nature.

So what happens is you get some kid whose parents have been telling her for years that cannabis is a terrible drug that will destroy your life and make you an addict, just like crack or heroin or anything else, and she ends up trying cannabis and finding out that yeah, it’s really not such a big deal.

Now what you’ve done is taught her that nothing else you’ve warned her about is a big deal either.  “Well, they lied to me about pot, so I guess snorting this line of coke or smoking this rock of crack or this bunch of meth or shooting some heroin is probably okay, too, so I’ll just try some.” 

It’s “the parent who cried wolf,” and perhaps more than any other factor it is creating new addicts every single day.

Don’t lie to your kids about drugs and drug use, okay?  Seriously.  Pot and heroin aren’t the same things.  Understand the differences between “physical” and “psychological” addiction that I outlined in my previous video, and don’t try to convince your kids that one is just the same as the other.  They will find out differently, and when they do you’ve just lost all credibility you may have had with them – they can’t trust you anymore on this subject, and therefore everything you’ve said about it will be ignored as just “mom and dad being stupid.”

That will only have one ending, and it won’t be happy.  So please, stop lying about drugs to your kids.  It’s killing them just as quickly and effectively as giving the drugs to them would.

A text transcript is below, under the embedded video. Thanks for visiting, please remember to share-like-and-comment.  Part Three will be posted very soon.

Transcript

So last video we were talking about the drug problem this country has, and we had discussed the first of those problems, which is that we have people on drugs who don't understand the differences between drugs and the effect those drugs have on the body, and so on and so forth.

Now we're going to talk about the second problem:  the second drug problem we have in this country is the way we educate ourself and each other and especially our kids about drugs.

The propaganda - the information! - about drug use, especially the stuff that's aimed at younger kids and teenagers has a tendency to equate everything with everything else.  Marijuana is just as bad as heroin is just as bad as PCP is just as bad as Drano. 

The problem with that, and I think it's reflective of a larger problem, but the problem with that is that kids know better.  Kids know better.  When they go out...eventually if your kid's going to have any interest in that kind of shit anyway, they're going endy up trying a few things.  They're going to end up trying a few things, just like you probably did, and they'll figure out soon enough, "you know what these aren't the same things.  It's not the same thing to go smoke a joint once a week as it is to  do an eight-ball of cocaine every night.  These aren't the same things.  They lied to me."

And the problem with that is, is now the people you're trying to teach don't respect your authority as a teacher anymore, because you haven't respected their intellect enough to tell them the truth.  So now instead of being able to look to information that may keep them from doing hard drugs, they ignore everything and do it themselves by trial and error.

So that's the second problem we've got, is the way we approach drugs and drugs education in this country, an din general, and I think it needs to be looked at.

Our next video is going to deal with the third problem we have with drugs in this country, which is the way we deal with drug use and addiction.

Thanks for watching, tune in for the third video, I would certainly appreciate it.  Remember to share, like, and comment, because I need all the traffic I can get, I'm trying to do this for a living.  Thanks very much for stopping by the blogs, LowGenius.Net and 40YearOldFreshman.Com, and we'll see you in the next video.