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This brought back memories of the D.A.R.E. officer coming to my elementary classroom to give us the "don't do drugs" speech. At the end of the speech with feign

This brought back memories of the D.A.R.E. officer coming to my elementary classroom to give us the "don't do drugs" speech. At the end of the speech with feigning hesitation he'd pull out the drug briefcase to the cheers of the kids, like a band holding out their best song for the encore. "This here is methamphetamine, aka crystal meth or speed. If you see a man running down the street with the strength of a bear, there's a good chance he's high on this. It's very bad. You don't want to get near this--it'll make your heart explode." It's a wonder that didn't work.

User23 2y ago
It was nice of them to teach kids how to identify real marijuana.
13of40 2y ago
I never attended a DARE class, but in the early 90s the t-shirts were everywhere so my memory of it was people wearing the shirts "ironically".
- marcodiego 2y ago
  In Brazil, in the 90's there was a campaign called "Drogas nem morto" (drugs not even dead). I heard about a guy who used a t-shirt of the campaign to sell drugs.
- gwbas1c 2y ago
  DARE to resist drugs. I don't do dares. (joke)
- Izkata 2y ago
  > so my memory of it was people wearing the shirts "ironically". Drugs Are Really Enjoyable/Excellent
- buildsjets 2y ago
  Still have one, vintage '91 to '93 or so. I wear it to Phish shows.
flatline 2y ago
I did not get the briefcase in my DARE education. What I did get is a cop telling me that my parents having a glass of wine with dinner or a cigarette after work was just as bad a them using cocaine, and that you could OD and die on weed. All drugs are equally bad. A few years later when my friends were smoking weed and laughed at my concerns, and I realized I’d been lied to, I pretty much did everything under the sun. An actual education would have let me make better choices about my recreational drug use as a young person.
- vundercind 2y ago
  The realization that almost all illegal drugs (heroin, meth, a handful like that that feel too good—probably exceptions) aren’t really in some much worse category than alcohol and nicotine, and that some are surely less-bad, even, was quite a revelation. Must be a shared experience for a lot of the DARE generation.
  - Retric 2y ago
    I think people underestimate many illegal drugs because they don’t know long term users. Alcohol and Tobacco have minimal short term health risks. Most people throw up rather than OD on Alcohol. Obviously driving while fucked us is dangerous, but the same is true of a lot of drugs. Driving stoned is an underappreciated risk. LSD arguably the poster child for safe illegal drugs, but still physically risky due to people doing dangerous things in it and falling etc. However the mental risks with heavy use are significant much earlier. Luckily it’s not particularly addictive, but IMO it’s more dangerous than both Alcohol and Tobacco even as people claim otherwise. Tobacco is seriously deadly long term, but the risks are low for the first 20 years. When you include risks from throwing up while unconscious etc, heavy use of many seemingly safe drugs end up risky on those timescales.
    - evilsnoopi3 2y ago
      Literally only one of the drugs you mentioned can kill you due to withdrawal. Hint: it's not LSD or tobacco. Alcohol is an _extremely_ harmful drug.
delichon 2y ago
In high school around 1976 we got a talk by the swim team coach, telling us the horrors of various drugs, going into his wide personal experience with them and why we shouldn't follow his example. He told us that if we ever had any questions he was there for us, and gave us all his personal phone number. So me and some buddies got a hold of some peyote and were more than a little afraid of it. We probably would have tossed it but we had a better idea. We called Coach and asked his advice. He gave us detailed preparation instructions. We followed them and got a bit sick, but not altered. Maybe it wasn't even peyote. I'm not sure that this approach was just more nuanced than "just say no" or closer to "just do it".
- cess11 2y ago
  Did the proposed preparation entail heating? Might have described a process that destroyed most of the mescaline to spare you the experience, which can be quite frightening and/or debilitating. I've never come across someone that does more preparation than drying, so to me it seems suspicious to suggest anything else. Mescaline is water soluble so one can make infusions, but it takes a fair bit of plant material to get dosed so there isn't much practical use in doing so.
  - delichon 2y ago
    No heating. I was just along for the ride, but I think it was something to do with removing hairs, and to make it less bitter.
    - cess11 2y ago
      Reducing bitterness likely reduces potency as well. Mescaline itself is quite bitter and whatever solvent is used to flush out other less tasty substances will likely solve mescaline as well. Drying slightly improves the taste but not by much.
InitialLastName 2y ago
We had the county sheriff come to an assembly, show us pictures of a local "drug den" they had busted, bring out a body bag and tell us "it breaks my heart when I pick up a body bag and the weight shifts to one end, because that means there's a kid in it", and conclude with "If you ever touch drugs you'll end up living here until I drag you out in a bag".
YesBox 2y ago
I had the briefcase experience (except it was a portable glass display case with every drug under the sun). Looked like a bunch of candy to me as a kid. I think they even had a fake version placed next to the real thing? One thing they did that has stuck with me though was this plastic bag contraption with some material inside to represent the human lungs. There was a hole at the top which the DARE officer placed a lit cigarette, then began (somehow) pumping air from the hole down into the lung material. I remember watching the material quickly go from white to brown and tarry. By the time the cigarette was out, she looked us all in the eyes and said "this is what smoking does to your lungs"
Log_out_ 2y ago
The rootcause is the hyper competitiveness od us society. There are only winners and loosees, and loosers do drugs.. So every economic downturn people do what they were told, if success does not happen and self destruct to keep life bearable.
bko 2y ago
Do you feel the same way about sex ed? In other words, is exposing children to sexual education actually encouraging them to have premarital or unsafe sex?
- blessedwhiskers 2y ago
  I'd argue DARE is more akin to abstinence only sex ed than an actual sex ed curriculum. Or at least my DARE experience was much closer to a Mr. Mackey "Drugs are bad, m'kay" than a measured instruction of various drugs and the kinds of harms they posed.
- jandrese 2y ago
  The problem with DARE is that the message was "all drugs will kill you and your family if you so much as look in their direction, call the cops anytime you see anyone who looks even a bit drugged out". Then some kids try some pot and discover that DARE was full of shit and they disregard the entire message or even rebel against it. Education programs are counterproductive when they are loaded with misinformation.
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
  DARE is the equivalent of telling kids that if they have sex, they will get an STD and ruin their life forever with a painful, annoying, lifelong illness. Interpret outcomes from that as you will.
nonameiguess 2y ago
This seems to be the overwhelming majority sentiment of the Internet or at least of what gets upvoted, but I think DARE at least worked on me. I wanna say it was probably 2nd grade, which would have been 1987 or 1988, and I don't remember the briefcase, but I do remember a plastic lung. It filled up and blackened with tar after only a few puffs from a cigarette and I remember being so viscerally disgusted and disturbed by that, I resolved to never smoke and I never did, in spite of a lot of peer pressure. I was largely friends with goths and art kids and nearly all of my friends smoked, some as early as 4th grade, but I never did.
rabbits_2002 2y ago
The sole take away I got from DARE when I was a kid is “LSD sounds really cool, gotta try that someday”
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
Drugs Are Really Excellent
fatnoah 2y ago
I've probably said this in other posts, but the best "don't do drugs" education my child got was living in a city. It's one thing to hear about drugs, it's another to watch your dad call 911 for a man collapsed with a needle still in his arm in a subway headhouse doorway.

User23 2y ago

It was nice of them to teach kids how to identify real marijuana.

13of40 2y ago

I never attended a DARE class, but in the early 90s the t-shirts were everywhere so my memory of it was people wearing the shirts "ironically".

marcodiego 2y ago
In Brazil, in the 90's there was a campaign called "Drogas nem morto" (drugs not even dead). I heard about a guy who used a t-shirt of the campaign to sell drugs.
gwbas1c 2y ago
DARE to resist drugs. I don't do dares. (joke)
Izkata 2y ago
> so my memory of it was people wearing the shirts "ironically". Drugs Are Really Enjoyable/Excellent
buildsjets 2y ago
Still have one, vintage '91 to '93 or so. I wear it to Phish shows.

flatline 2y ago

I did not get the briefcase in my DARE education. What I did get is a cop telling me that my parents having a glass of wine with dinner or a cigarette after work was just as bad a them using cocaine, and that you could OD and die on weed. All drugs are equally bad. A few years later when my friends were smoking weed and laughed at my concerns, and I realized I’d been lied to, I pretty much did everything under the sun. An actual education would have let me make better choices about my recreational drug use as a young person.

vundercind 2y ago
The realization that almost all illegal drugs (heroin, meth, a handful like that that feel too good—probably exceptions) aren’t really in some much worse category than alcohol and nicotine, and that some are surely less-bad, even, was quite a revelation. Must be a shared experience for a lot of the DARE generation.
- Retric 2y ago
  I think people underestimate many illegal drugs because they don’t know long term users. Alcohol and Tobacco have minimal short term health risks. Most people throw up rather than OD on Alcohol. Obviously driving while fucked us is dangerous, but the same is true of a lot of drugs. Driving stoned is an underappreciated risk. LSD arguably the poster child for safe illegal drugs, but still physically risky due to people doing dangerous things in it and falling etc. However the mental risks with heavy use are significant much earlier. Luckily it’s not particularly addictive, but IMO it’s more dangerous than both Alcohol and Tobacco even as people claim otherwise. Tobacco is seriously deadly long term, but the risks are low for the first 20 years. When you include risks from throwing up while unconscious etc, heavy use of many seemingly safe drugs end up risky on those timescales.
  - evilsnoopi3 2y ago
    Literally only one of the drugs you mentioned can kill you due to withdrawal. Hint: it's not LSD or tobacco. Alcohol is an _extremely_ harmful drug.

delichon 2y ago

In high school around 1976 we got a talk by the swim team coach, telling us the horrors of various drugs, going into his wide personal experience with them and why we shouldn't follow his example. He told us that if we ever had any questions he was there for us, and gave us all his personal phone number. So me and some buddies got a hold of some peyote and were more than a little afraid of it. We probably would have tossed it but we had a better idea. We called Coach and asked his advice. He gave us detailed preparation instructions. We followed them and got a bit sick, but not altered. Maybe it wasn't even peyote. I'm not sure that this approach was just more nuanced than "just say no" or closer to "just do it".

cess11 2y ago
Did the proposed preparation entail heating? Might have described a process that destroyed most of the mescaline to spare you the experience, which can be quite frightening and/or debilitating. I've never come across someone that does more preparation than drying, so to me it seems suspicious to suggest anything else. Mescaline is water soluble so one can make infusions, but it takes a fair bit of plant material to get dosed so there isn't much practical use in doing so.
- delichon 2y ago
  No heating. I was just along for the ride, but I think it was something to do with removing hairs, and to make it less bitter.
  - cess11 2y ago
    Reducing bitterness likely reduces potency as well. Mescaline itself is quite bitter and whatever solvent is used to flush out other less tasty substances will likely solve mescaline as well. Drying slightly improves the taste but not by much.

InitialLastName 2y ago

We had the county sheriff come to an assembly, show us pictures of a local "drug den" they had busted, bring out a body bag and tell us "it breaks my heart when I pick up a body bag and the weight shifts to one end, because that means there's a kid in it", and conclude with "If you ever touch drugs you'll end up living here until I drag you out in a bag".

YesBox 2y ago

I had the briefcase experience (except it was a portable glass display case with every drug under the sun). Looked like a bunch of candy to me as a kid. I think they even had a fake version placed next to the real thing? One thing they did that has stuck with me though was this plastic bag contraption with some material inside to represent the human lungs. There was a hole at the top which the DARE officer placed a lit cigarette, then began (somehow) pumping air from the hole down into the lung material. I remember watching the material quickly go from white to brown and tarry. By the time the cigarette was out, she looked us all in the eyes and said "this is what smoking does to your lungs"

Log_out_ 2y ago

The rootcause is the hyper competitiveness od us society. There are only winners and loosees, and loosers do drugs.. So every economic downturn people do what they were told, if success does not happen and self destruct to keep life bearable.

bko 2y ago

Do you feel the same way about sex ed? In other words, is exposing children to sexual education actually encouraging them to have premarital or unsafe sex?

blessedwhiskers 2y ago
I'd argue DARE is more akin to abstinence only sex ed than an actual sex ed curriculum. Or at least my DARE experience was much closer to a Mr. Mackey "Drugs are bad, m'kay" than a measured instruction of various drugs and the kinds of harms they posed.
jandrese 2y ago
The problem with DARE is that the message was "all drugs will kill you and your family if you so much as look in their direction, call the cops anytime you see anyone who looks even a bit drugged out". Then some kids try some pot and discover that DARE was full of shit and they disregard the entire message or even rebel against it. Education programs are counterproductive when they are loaded with misinformation.
xboxnolifes 2y ago
DARE is the equivalent of telling kids that if they have sex, they will get an STD and ruin their life forever with a painful, annoying, lifelong illness. Interpret outcomes from that as you will.

nonameiguess 2y ago

This seems to be the overwhelming majority sentiment of the Internet or at least of what gets upvoted, but I think DARE at least worked on me. I wanna say it was probably 2nd grade, which would have been 1987 or 1988, and I don't remember the briefcase, but I do remember a plastic lung. It filled up and blackened with tar after only a few puffs from a cigarette and I remember being so viscerally disgusted and disturbed by that, I resolved to never smoke and I never did, in spite of a lot of peer pressure. I was largely friends with goths and art kids and nearly all of my friends smoked, some as early as 4th grade, but I never did.

rabbits_2002 2y ago

The sole take away I got from DARE when I was a kid is “LSD sounds really cool, gotta try that someday”

BeFlatXIII 2y ago

Drugs Are Really Excellent

fatnoah 2y ago

I've probably said this in other posts, but the best "don't do drugs" education my child got was living in a city. It's one thing to hear about drugs, it's another to watch your dad call 911 for a man collapsed with a needle still in his arm in a subway headhouse doorway.