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Education is not prevention in this arena. It became impossible to smoke anywhere. Taxes made it more difficult to purchase cigarettes. Kids learn about drug abuse in elementary school and up.
And therein lies the tale.
My recommendation for an assured
prevention strategy is to make constructive use of some really ripe, nodding-out, strung-out, filthy, stinking, degenerate junkies with festering needle sores and snot-dripping noses. Arrange for auditorium appearances of these tragic creatures at grade-schools. Let the pre-high school level kids have a look at them. Let the junkies tell the kids what they did to get that way. In other words, scare the shit out of the kids with a good look at what using hard drugs can do to you.
That's the way to do it. It makes a hell of an impression. I've seen the positive effect of a slightly different version of that strategy and I can tell you it is very effective.
Public education at the base level.
I.... would like to believe that. I really would. But I don't see that in my experience.
Kids do what their friends think too often. If you control who your kids associate with, I think that is the best possible solution. We need to isolate the crazy drug idiots.
Of course that means expelling tons of bad kids from schools, and having parents go through a melt down over it, threatening politicians with massive vote drives, which results in politicians letting the crazy students back in.
Which is why basically, we need to eliminate public schools, and / or put in place a massive voucher program.
The reason I don't think your plan will work, is because it never seems to work when I see real life examples.
Right now at my work place, we have a lady in her 50s that's a chain smoker. She looks like she's 70. Her skin is all rotted out by smoking.
The effects of smoking on looks are all well documented. Plus you have the smoker voice. You know, where they sound like someone beat them in the throat with a stick.
And she's constantly coughing. Constantly breathing hard. And everyone knows, this is what happens when you smoke. You look nasty, can't talk, and have basic breathing problems.
Everyone knows this. But we have girls in the place, and guys, that go right outside and start puffing on sticks, and I've said to them, you know you are going to look, sound, and have the same problems she does, right?
Yup.... but all their friends smoke, so they smoke, because how are you going to quit, if you go out side with all your friends, and they are blowing cancer clouds all over the place?
Similarly, the pull of friends in school is massive. Because your kids are around those kids all the time. If you don't 'fit in' with them, you are screwed.
Thomas Sowell in his book talks about how he was placed in a class with a bunch of crazy people, and his grades fell drastically. Nothing improved until he himself requested to be moved out of that class (or was moved by someone, can't remember)... then as soon as he got away from the trouble students, his grades bounced back up.
Yeah, it would be great if just showing kids a bunch of crazy druggies all screwed up, would make them go 'I'll never do that'... But I think the reality is, all the druggies are going to say "that's all a lie. I know because I'm not like that", and pretty soon your kids will want to be part of the group, and join in, anyway.
You need to get your kids away from the bad kids. That's all you can do. Since the politicians are never going to fix that, (because voting parents won't let them), you need either move to a different school, or private school... or home school. Or get a voucher system in place.
