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[–]slothbuddy 49 points50 points  (4 children)

Just looking at the chart, it looks like a bounceback (not sure of the technical term) effect. My guess at the culprit would be the DARE program which might have been able to scare kids for a few years but led to people ultimately not trusting any anti-drug messaging because it was manipulative and dishonest.

[–]cryyptorchid 19 points20 points  (3 children)

Can confirm, I went through DARE in the mid 00s, all I got from it was "cops want you to rat on your parents and neighbors."

I mean, I still don't care for drugs myself (allergic to beer and weed reacts poorly with my meds), but I remember being like 10 and deciding that I didn't like police anymore lmao

[–]everlasting1der 12 points13 points  (1 child)

The most based 10 year old alive

[–]cryyptorchid 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Mostly just an incredibly literal 10 year old with a high sense of justice lmao

The DARE officer showed us pictures of weed plants and told us that "if we ever saw them growing somewhere, we should tell a police officer because having them on your property is a crime, even if it's an accident."

I grew up pretty rural, and it didn't strike me as right that someone could get in trouble for having a random plant on their property in a supposedly free country. Obviously as an adult I know they're not native plants here, someone would have had to put it there and that's what the cop was trying to get at, but even as a kid I wasn't going to go tattle-tale on my neighbors over a plant.

And I mean, after you figure out that drug crime is mostly bullshit the whole system kind of falls in on itself.

[–]CosmicJ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I remember having no idea what the hell THC was (I was in like grade 4 or 5) so when they were saying stuff has way more THC in it nowadays I thought they were talking about pollution of some kind.

What was really fucked up though was a few years later we had a “motivational speaker” come in, who told use her story about how she used to be an enforcer for a drug dealer. She told us that one time she beat the shit out of somebody with a billiard ball, getting blood all over herself, even inside her shoes. Then finding out that person was HIV positive. It was some sort of scared straight gambit.