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There's a lot of ignorance about drugs among the general public, and they tended to buy in to the anti-drug propaganda coming at them from all sides -- from the

There's a lot of ignorance about drugs among the general public, and they tended to buy in to the anti-drug propaganda coming at them from all sides -- from the media, from anti-drug scientists, from the DEA and various anti-drug organizations, and from society at large. It's hard to blame them, when they're surrounded by such propaganda, and (as usual) very few people were independent enough to actually dig deep in to this themselves and find out what was really going on in respect to drug safety, benefits, and policy. Most just swallowed the official line.

dfxm12 6y ago
Most just swallowed the official line. I know we're largely talking about hypothetical people, but if people were just going with the flow, I'm not sure that explains the inability to swallow the new official line.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "I'm not sure that explains the inability to swallow the new official line." How official is it? In the US, at least, the government spent many millions of dollars (hundreds of millions? billions?) on anti-drug education campaigns for decades, and there was mass media hysteria against drugs for decades. There are still no comparable pro-drug education campaigns, and while there have been some positive research results and positive media coverage on some drugs, the message overall is pretty mixed, and there's still plenty of anti-drug hysteria in the media and anti-drug messages from the government today. It's probably going to take a long time to change the minds of most people who grew up soaked in anti-drug propaganda.