Drug education in Australian Public state high schools

i attend year 12(last year) at public state high school in Queensland, and we were given a book called "street" or something last year, and i have only just read through some of it. The thing that alarmed me the most was under the cannabis section, where it stated that smoking cannabis decreases zinc in your body, which affects hormones and hormone production. Im wanting to know how much it damage this can cause? of course they could just be exaggerating it to scare teenagers, but on the other hand it might be serious...

Also i believe Drug and especially alcohol education needs to be improved in high schools, comming from first hand experience we have no one talk to us about it, i have gotten "in trouble" with teachers and my principle at my school for asking questions about drugs, even though they were questions about what damage they do to you. We are just given a small brief book with "facts" about drugs, sex, alcohol. This outrages me! there is constantly news on tv and radio about under-age drinking and drugs etc. yet the government dosnt take the time to educate the youth on the dangers, health risks etc of alcohol and other illegal substances. They basically just say NO to anything illegal and dont educate, and thats that they expect us not to be curious. It is also crazy to be giving this book to students at the end of year 11 when they are 16, chances are atleast 80% of them have tryed alcohol or drugs by then.

I just think that the government has gone about controlling substances completely wrong.

Being a product of the Catholic school system I suffered from "scientifically proven" drug education which was just as useless due to so much BS being intermingled with truth that it's all discounted as faulty by the majority. They just won't let go of that Ricaurte study even when literally shown that it was retracted. The government needs to improve education in high school and begin it at an earlier age before people actually start experimenting.

well as long as you didn't receive a copy of the australian government drugs "fact" pack

you might be ok.
i mean this book listed LSD and Psilocybin (mushies for those wondering) as the same fkn thing.

i don't remember receiving any sort of education about drugs at high school. then again i went to a public secondary college in melbourne's outer eastern suburbs.
which didn't exactly have the world's greatest reputation. (croydon s/c... and i'm sure a few of you reading will understand what i am on about here)

and your comment about receiving the info at the end of year 11. i'd agree.
my entire circle of friends were complete stoners by year 9.
and a few of us had ventured further to trying speed and other much better chemicals by year 10.
almosy everybody had been drunk at some point

and for me, at the end of year 11 i had been abusing speed on a daily basis for the past year. aswell as dabbling in cid and weed aswell.

i think you're 80% statistic wouldn't be too far from accurate.

The problem we have with drug education in schools is that drug use is taboo, both legally and socially.

Compare it to sex and alcohol education/awareness - Teachers and community leaders will explain that it is a better choice to practice abstinence, however, if you are going to do it, you should do it legally/responsibly, ie - use contraception and drink in moderation respectively.

However, in relation to drug use, there is no legal best practice. Obviously the same rules as with alcohol apply, however, schools cannot promote safe drug use as an alternative to unsafe use...therefore the non negative effects are never discussed.

This non disclosure / ignorance is further snowballed by the fact the AFP and other government organisations are intentionally misreporting facts and spreading horror stories and lies (crushed glass, rat sack, heroin in pills, etc).

On the flip side, if the effects of drugs were more accurately discussed, drug use would undoubtedly become more common. The current system is flawed, but are there any other valid (and realistic) approaches?

For example:
"Hey Kids, MDMA is hugely enjoyable and reasonably safe when done in moderation....but PLEASE don't do it!"

+1 on the too late angle. Feature: by the end of Year 11 all of us had started experimenting long before. Item: by that point, some of us had quite long lists of substances used and a couple of us already had fermenting fixations or hideous habits.

Esotericism said:

Being a product of the Catholic school system I suffered from "scientifically proven" drug education which was just as useless due to so much BS being intermingled with truth that it's all discounted as faulty by the majority. They just won't let go of that Ricaurte study even when literally shown that it was retracted. The government needs to improve education in high school and begin it at an earlier age before people actually start experimenting.

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I went to a Catholic school (wasn't Catholic but my parents both dug on the place) and we got little to no education on drugs. A cop visited us just before Schoolies Week to frighten us away from powders and pills with pics of dodgy meth labs and telling us how if we get arrested we'll never be able to visit America.

Went to a public school, got the general standard drugs are bad stuff, would often bring in former addicts that would always start of saying "were not here to preach anything, but..."

Did have a chick come in and educate us on weed who put forth an unbias viewpoint. Most people who go to public schools are stoner's so she kinda stood out a bit. Can't remember anything any of them taught me or tried too, lot's of the kids would wag the drug education classes because they were so boring and repetitive.

im educating yr 10's at the moment.

there is a massive void to be filled with regards to decent drug education in schools...our program cannot do it all by any means.

we have to focus on the most disadvantaged people in the most disadvantaged areas.

I went to a public school (finished last year) and can agree on the too little, too late stance in terms of the level of drug/alcohol education we received.

I think a great start would be engaging a far larger part of the PD/H/PE curriculum in drug, alcohol, and lifestyle education, and to have that education be given yearly or at least bi-yearly from the beginning of high school, or at least from the ninth grade onwards, rather than just having a one-off section devoted to it. Another idea would be drug counsellors whom students wanting to talk about drugs (be it whether they perceive themselves as having issues or not) can access, or more realistically, training the existing school counsellors to have a good level of knowledge regarding the subject, and making it very clear to all students that such a person exists. That way students using drugs may go to said counseller, get some informed advice which hopefully has a strong harm reduction standpoint, as they are already using drugs, indicating the "just say no" viewpoint has already failed, whilst sparing the 'innocence' of the non drug using kids.

Although I can already see how this could go horribly wrong as well...

Not meaning to sound rude at all.
But welcome to what most of Australia's "drug users" have been going through for years.


I know when I first started experimenting with anything, the stuff we learnt in school was useless. It was basically erowid which kept me sane for a while there.

And on your second question about marijuana and hormones, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that this is confirmed. Read more here:
http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_myth6.shtml

Agreed Syki.

Erowid, Wikipedia, Pill Reports and Bluelight FOR THE WIN!

i went to a pretty expensive private school in sydney. in pe they gave the usual drug education teaching us the classes of drugs and the negative effects. however in yr 10 a lady came in who presented all this information including brain scans comparing non smokers to regular marijuana users. also gave detailed information about binge drinking. she never really talked about any other drugs tho.

I'm currently in a state school.


The drug education is pathetic. They actually gave us that "streets" book today and after reading some of it I'm actually horrified that they would consider LSD and PCP to be on the same page. They're claiming LSD has the nickname Angel Dust, to me that's just fucking misleading.


Last year I had to attend a program called "Crossroads" with the rest of my year. I had to sit through the bullshit they were trying to feed us. Of course, I got kicked out of the drug side of the course within 3 hours for talking over the presenter and claiming the majority of the facts they were presenting were wrong and totally misleading.

To be honest though, I really enjoyed the course, it let me practice my debating skills and own government pawns at the same time. Also i was extraaa good at classifying the drugs %)

Across three different high schools, the only drug education I've recieved was at a Catholic school and was utterly ridiculous. Basically consisted of "Drugs are bad but we know you will probably do drugs so just remember you will die!" I got into a pretty decent argument with the teacher, went away at lunch and printed out a bunch of studies and shit which she didn't believe existed, gave them to her and then she just flat ignored me for the rest of the day.

I was at a private school, and we didn't get any drug education at all. The only thing I remember is receiving a pamphlet before schoolies giving the usual scare tactic propaganda about party drugs, complete with incorrectly placed slang. Pretty horrible considering by that point probably 20% of the guys in our grade were regular pill users, and several were tabbling in crystal/coke/psychadelics.

I went to a couple of different public high schools. One of them was a country high school where the person you could supposedly 'talk to' was a state sponsored chaplain who wove God and Christianity into everything she said.

She wasn't a bad person, just she had no idea about teenage issues in general, let alone accurate information on drugs.

I think it's disgraceful that the Government wastes money by paying someone who obviously believes in fairy tales (religion) to talk to kids and then supplies literature full of misinformation and lies.

Most of the kids were either complete stoners (ie went to classes stoned) or had tried weed at some point, and everyone got drunk most weekends. Even in the country where it's harder to get other drugs, some had tried E and speed. Also, almost everyone smoked cigarettes.

It's hard to see the logic in perpetuating a drug education model that clearly has systemic failures. The 'just say no' line doesn't work for sex ed, and thankfully we've realised that in this country. You only have to see how well that works (or doesn't, as the case may be) in the USA, to see that the approach is fundamentally flawed.

It's just a shame that the people who control these policies, pander to the conservative voting majority who don't know any better about drugs themselves, and probably believe the propaganda that is distributed by anti-drug agencies.

Harm reduction education will almost never have a place in schools because the majority of people either don't care or believe that an abstinence based approach works best. I suppose it's up to us, who can see that harm reduction works, to force honesty and openness in drug education.

The sad thing is that ultimately these failings directly lead to harm, including death, in the youth that we're supposed to be protecting.

I went to a state and catholic school in Country SA and both had good drug educations.

They didn't have the no approach, they actually gave information on how to make informed decisions on taking drugs and had ex drug users talk to us.

However, some of the information was still quite off but at least they are getting there.

I finished year 12 last year in NSW and the only accurate drug education I had was through that street book, which had surprisingly good info about substances... not just the negatives. The PDHPE syllabus was just horrible for it though.

my health classes for high skool were balls. i obviously knew a bit more than the average non drug taking student because i took drugs, surfed erowid quite often in my highschool days and basically didnt take any old talk as fact(pill myths and such) and my teacher picked up on that


the teacher wud take my knowledge as showing off and i wud be made fun of as the dodgy stoner and to more knowing students(knowing as in they knew i took pillls), the pill head. this angered me deeply as i just wanted to educate peers around me and i got reticuled for it,

Drug education in my school was a joke. They waited until year 10 I think and just gave us these pamphlets covering a huge variety of issues from driving to smoking to alcohol, sex and drugs. Most of the information was bollocks and any truthful information was just true negative effects in a bullet point list with the rest of the bullshit ones. This book was handed out once every subsequent year with little to no discussion of the content.

DiscoRekkah. said:

my health classes for high skool were balls. i obviously knew a bit more than the average non drug taking student because i took drugs, surfed erowid quite often in my highschool days and basically didnt take any old talk as fact(pill myths and such) and my teacher picked up on that


the teacher wud take my knowledge as showing off and i wud be made fun of as the dodgy stoner and to more knowing students(knowing as in they knew i took pillls), the pill head. this angered me deeply as i just wanted to educate peers around me and i got reticuled for it,

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Yes that was my fear, I didn't let my knowledge of harder drugs out into the public forum of the school. Most people drank/smoked pot when we were getting taught the bullshit, but I didnt dare tell them that rat poison and adulterants arent in every pill and all those other lies like they would want to make you believe.