I respect you and appreciate your contributions here, MDAO
But here, I want to push you about your use of the word "drugs".
Do you mean all recreational drugs? If so, do you include chocolate and tea?
Are you using it in the "mainstream" way to mean something like "recreational drugs illegal in our system / not culturally accepted"?
Surely you would not include medicinal use of chemical substances in your definition? Even if said substances were identical to the recreational drugs?
Aw shucks. For the record, slim, I think you win at keeping up DiTM. Like General MacArthur, I shall return some day to Asia, and we need to get together and put some Uyghur hash in our lungs and some fatty tuna belly in our stomachs
I agree with you wholeheartedly that there is no clear boundary between food, drug, and medicine, other than the ones we culturally construct. The definitions of these words provides a good illustration. A food is a substance that is taken orally as a source of chemical energy, a.k.a. metabolic fuel. A drug is any substance that temporarily changes how the body works. A medicine is any substance people expose their body to with the intent of treating disease at the molecular level. So a Venn diagram would look like two intersecting circles, with a big hoop completely encircling them both. All foods and medicines are drugs. Some drugs are both. But there are plenty of drugs which are neither.
There is a reason we do not let children drive cars, have sex, or use fire. It's not that kids shouldn't know or think about these activities, and it's definitely not that they're not physically capable. It's that these activities carry a high degree of risk, and as such warrant a more mature level of judgement, caution, and cool-headed critical thinking than most activities in our daily lives. Children's brains are growing. The brain doesn't fully mature until 21 years old (+/- 4y depending on the individual and everything factoring into his/her development). Most critically, the prefrontal cortex, where critical thinking, impulse control, and judgement happen, is under construction until the very end of this period, and lacks the myelinated connections to other parts of the nervous system to act in time to block sudden strong impulses or hasty moves.
As none of us here need to be told, there is no such thing as risk-free drug use. (Or when it comes down to it, risk free
living!) Every time one makes a choice to put something into one's body, or refrain from doing so, that choice carries a specific profile of potential health hazards, and health benefits, that are likely to result. This risk-benefit profile of course depends on set, setting, dose, and the intentions of the person in question. A newborn baby alone with his mother in her arms nursing out 60cc of breast milk with the intention of feeling safe and protected and falling off to sleep, for example, carries a risk-benefit profile that gives good odds for positive outcomes, and not so good odds for a much smaller number of possible negative outcomes. A 9 year old girl furtively swallowing 30mg of oxycodone she stole from grandma on her walk home from school, as prophylaxis against the painful abuse she fears awaits her there, would have much the opposite profile.
I'd like to argue that there is a ratio of potential for harm to potential for benefit, above which most people are only comfortable letting children be exposed at the approval of, and under the supervision of, adults with a duty to look after the child's wellbeing. Stimulants for gradeschool kids with ADHD falls squarely into this territory. I would also like to argue that a great number -- probably most -- non-food drugs that people put into their bodies with the intent of inducing euphoria, inhibiting dysphoria, enhancing the pleasurability of activities, or enhancing performance -- also carry risk-benefit profiles that are above this "line of comfort", of which I speak, for most people. As a tree planted against a fence has its shape permanently altered by it even when the fence is gone, a growing body and mind will cope with, and tweak the little details of their development in anticipation of, the continued presence of any substance that they're exposed to regularly and early on. A dude who has smoked cigarettes daily for years beginning before puberty has a hole in his personality that can only be filled with a cigarette habit. Put another way, cigarettes likely are, long have been, and always will be, a weight-bearing pillar in this dude's strategy for coping with the ups and downs of life. He will always feel their absence to some degree, years after he's ever touched a cigarette. It's quite possible this dude's toolbox for coping with life and remaining efficacious is not, and won't likely ever be, as well-stocked with healthy solutions to the problems a cigarette habit solves, as it would be if he'd never picked up that first smoke on the playground. A person who picks up their first cigarette in his 20s, by contrast, is a lot more likely to soon conclude that cigarettes are a fifth wheel. He's likely already got working lifestyle solutions to most of the problems he might have turned to cigarettes to solve, and that any further benefit he might derive certainly does not justify the massive risk to his health.
I, too, am a realist when it comes to my children's exposure to drugs made, bought, and taken for the express purposes of thrill, boundary-pushing, and/or enhancement. They will probably encounter such opportunities long before their bodies and minds are fully matured, and neither I nor any other adult who cares for them will be there at the time to weight in on their decision to partake. There is a drive in every parent to pull our children close and tight to us and never let go, forever protecting them from any and all suffering. But at the same time we also know that if we love them we must set them free and let them learn many of the important lessons of life firsthand, the hard way, as heartwrenching as I imagine it will be to watch the world knock them down and shatter their illusions.
With that in mind, in the context of an aimed-for relationship with my children built on love, trust, and a high level of confidence that my intentions toward them are always benevolent, I want to consistently emphasize a few nuggets of wisdom regarding recreational drugs, and hope that they hear my kind, loving, and not at all puritanical voice in their heads whenever they reach that decision point.
And frankly, I wouldn't mind if they dabbled and experimented with a couple of substances as teens, but ultimately decided to hold off on any major psychonautic voyages until they had a solid education, a sense of career direction, some street smarts, and a well-developed set of values, identity, and self-respect. They'd just be less likely, this way, to try relying on drugs as the primary solution to major unmet needs or unresolved issues.
Sorry for the long post -- hope that explains my perspective.
