Scare stories ‘not working’ says drug expert

[Jabberwocky]

YOU could be doing more harm than good if you express “extreme” views on drugs with teenagers, warns a health expert who says it’s better to talk openly through issues.

Paul Dillon, from Drug and Alcohol Research Training Australia, says repeating the scare stories we read about in the media is counter-productive when it comes to trying to persuade young people not to take drugs.

After speaking with tens of thousands of teenagers and parents, he believes the best way to turn young people off is to open up and have a frank discussion about why people take them.

“First off, you’ve got to acknowledge the positives,” he told 3AW today. “Why do people do it. I’m not saying write down all the positive things about cocaine.

“But just ask, why would anyone use this drug? They obviously know the perceived positive benefits and you can then challenge them.

“Number one, it’s illegal and then you can then talk about the realistic harms. You have to be absolutely honest. A good relationship with your kids and good communication is the key.”

However, Mr Dillon said scare stories won’t work.

“We only ever talk about ecstasy when someone dies, but the reality is that very few people die from ecstasy but everyone that does ends up on the front page of the paper,” he said. “So we get a warped view.

“If you keep saying ecstasy kills you, and then your child goes to a nightclub or a music festival and there’s no dead people lying around — then the information you’ve given doesn’t match the experience.

“Of course you’ve got to acknowledge the extreme end of the dangers, but you’ve also got to acknowledge the other ones. Many people who take ecstasy experience nausea, they’ll vomit and not feel well. Most importantly it’s illegal — so your life will change if you get caught.”

The most recent 2014 Australian Secondary Students’ Alcohol and Drug survey of more than 23,000 students aged between 12 and 17 found 96.9 per cent had never used ecstasy, 98.1 per cent had never used cocaine, 98.5 per cent had never used opiates, and 97.6 per cent had never used amphetamines.

More than 80 per cent had never used tranquillisers, cannabis, inhalants, hallucinogens or steroids.

This tallies with Mr Dillon’s research. Out of 120,000 children he had spoken to in 2017, he said a vast majority told him they had never touched illicit drugs.

“Parents are so concerned about the ice epidemic that they are actually neglecting other issues,” he told 3AW.

“I’ve had parents say to me: ‘My child drinks alcohol when they’re 15, but at least they’re not using ice.’

“Of course ice is a problem in certain areas — but its not sweeping through all our kids and if we keep talking about those who do use drugs, we actually forget the majority who don’t.

“Most young people just don’t do this.”


Source: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/pa...t/news-story/8e0074874978a1fd763558d07588745f

 

[Tubbs]

It's amazing that they're just starting to realize this, ignorance truly must be bliss.

 

[Jabberwocky]

It's amazing that they're just starting to realize this, ignorance truly must be bliss.

I am starting to hate this whole war on drugs debate. Oh so when they say drugs does it mean alcohol and cigarettes too?

Alcohol has fucked me up more than some of the other drugs I've tried.

Don't agree with all substances being banned.

 

[Tubbs]

Absolutely, alcohol brings me to a state where there is no possibility of functioning. Banning drugs is incredibly harmful simply because it creates a thriving underground economy built on crime.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Absolutely, alcohol brings me to a state where there is no possibility of functioning. Banning drugs is incredibly harmful simply because it creates a thriving underground economy built on crime.

Here cocaine is $300 a gram. You are lucky if 15 - 20% of that gram is coke. Now why should this be banned besides due to some idiot inflating prices like no tomorrow?

As prices are allowed to be jacked up like this people are more inclined to commit crime, i.e. steal to feed their habbit.

Solution = Legalise it

 

[Tubbs]

Absolutely, I'm pro legalisation all the way. Most gang violence is centered around drugs and drug money, they're not preventing or hampering crime, they're encouraging it. I know I mad 11 dollars an hour at my job when I was working, when I was dealing it was at the minimum 5 times that. If I hadn't squandered that money on self destruction I would be set for a long time. If the money spent on the war on drugs was redirected to help the poor and sick this world would be much better off.

 

[spacejunk]

It's the old "boy who cried wolf" analogy.

For decades they claimed that cannabis causes the sorts of psychological distress that meth (and other psychostimulants) cause.
Which basically means that many of us who grew up with the ridiculous anti-pot propaganda - which didn't live up to our lived or observed experience - tended to also disregard the warnings when it came to other drugs.

I think prohibition causes more harm than illegal drugs themselves, in the big picture.
Legalisation and regulation would have far better outcomes.

 

[JessFR]

I was called for jury duty once. I got very close, to the last possible stage before ending up on a jury, but wound up not getting selected. No reason, my number simply didn't come up.

Anyhow, since I'm a smoker rather than be antisocial and sitting playing on my iPad like most people there I went out and socialized with my fellow ostracized smokers. I don't remember how it even came up, but someone mentioned krocadil, not by name but by reputation. And a woman there expressed her intention to tell her daughter about it to try and scare her away from drugs.

I didn't say anything but I always kinds regretted that. I wish I'd said something about how that's not a good idea. It is lying to your kids. Even if nothing you say it strictly factually wrong, if you intentionally select the truth to create an impression you know to be wrong then you're lying.

And if you're caught out, and if your kid was ever at any risk of drug use, you likely will be. It'll undermine anything else you've ever said. It doesn't work.

We all know it but so many people are so obsessed with what message is being sent and appearances they stop caring about facts or reality. Very frustrating.

 

[Glubrahnum]

“We only ever talk about ecstasy when someone dies, but the reality is that very few people die from ecstasy but everyone that does ends up on the front page of the paper,” he said. “So we get a warped view.

This is called Media Bias.
In his famous report in the Lancet, David Nutt has cited that every MDMA related death is reported while almost none of the Paracetamol related deaths is reported by the media, despite that Paracetamol kills many more people than MDMA.

 

[spacejunk]

He also pointed out that horse riding kills more people than MDMA.
And i bet more people take pills than ride horses...

 

[Tubbs]

Lol by far.

 

[JessFR]

This is called Media Bias.
In his famous report in the Lancet, David Nutt has cited that every MDMA related death is reported while almost none of the Paracetamol related deaths is reported by the media, despite that Paracetamol kills many more people than MDMA.

Yeah but people don't use paracetamol recreationally. That shouldn't make a difference, but that's why it's different.

Just like with the anti e-cigarette movement. Regardless of if those people actually even know it themselves, they aren't really against it for health reasons or to save people. If they were they'd change their minds when they see the truth but most of them won't even then.

Cause in truth, deep down, they've long been conditioned to be against it because in their mind, their entire social circle must be against it, and that means it must be bad. Even if they can't really explain why it's bad, the fact everyone believes it means it has to be to them.

They look for reasons to justify it but in truth that's the only reason that matters. If the whole world agreed with us, all those people would do everything they do now only for our side instead..

Cause what it's really about is that most people are fucking sheep. That's the real reason. Everything else is just an excuse to justify the real reason. And most of them don't even realize it because, well, how much lucidity would you expect out of a sheep?

This is the truth about why most people believe everything they believe. They copy their social circle. They copy whatever their circle circle believed, all of whom believed it for the same reasons. How it actually begins though is often nobody's intentional doing.

Only a very small portion of the population aren't sheep. Most of the people who complain about how most people are sheep, most of them are sheep too. It's just that their social circle is a minority. Still all the same driving forces at work though, they're just copying a smaller group.

 

[Steady Scootin]

Jess, look into the Dunning-Kruger Effect, it you're not familiar. Relates to what you're talking about in your last post quite well. Goes to show just how distorted most people's view of reality truly is, and I'm not sure much can be done about it on a mass scale.

 

[herbavore]

Talking to your kids (or any young people) about drugs is very tricky. I didn't think it would be until I was there. I started using drugs very dangerously and very abusively at around 14.--had pretty much quit everything except the occasional mushrooms by the time I was 25 or so. I was lucky enough to make it through the abuse without an addiction but my brother was not so lucky and has had to deal with issues of addiction all his life. So I wasn't a drug-naive parent, nor was I a parent that thought all drug use was bad. But I did think that it was problematic in my life because of my young age and lack of maturity (no impulse control whatsoever) and I had seen enough people walk through the same door I had and never come back out. I also understood the different mental vulnerabilities that made my brother's experience and my experience dangerous at that age.

But people like to alter their consciousness in every culture, in every epoch of history and there is not only fun to be had--it's serious business and there are a lot of good things to come out of an altered state of consciousness as well. So the problem is like anything else that children see and want to do long before they may be emotionally, physically or psychologically ready to do it. It is not all that different than encouraging young kids to wait to have sex until they are emotionally and psychologically ready. And like sex you want a way to talk about it that leaves morality out of the equation because that will fall flat immediately. It is not wrong to take drugs and it is not wrong to have sex; but either can be traumatic if you are too young to weigh consequences, to exercise critical thinking about set and setting, to know yourself and to have the emotional and psychological maturity to deal with situations in which you lose control.

I have two sons, one living and one whose life was cut short by a drug overdose when he was barely out of his teens (3 weeks to be exact). Many of my peers are aghast that I would advocate for legalization of every substance. They cannot believe that since my late son "had a drug problem" I am not advocating for even more scare stories--after all the mother of all scare stories is losing one's life. I see drugs as the physical cause of death, the way a knife in the hand of a murderer is the physical cause of death. The knife could as easily been used to cut bread and the drug could have just as easily been used as a medication, self-administered in a harmless way. But I also recognize the truth of what killed my son, the actual murderer to continue the metaphor and that is despair. One week after turning 18 my son was arrested for being drunk in public. They found LSD in his pocket and charged him with a felony. The DA gave us all his moralistic diatribe in court, chastising both my son and us, his parents and saying that he hoped this "lesson" would turn my son around. So at 18 my son said, "I am everything this culture hates. I am a felon, I have a diagnosis, I am a high school drop out and I'm an addict. There is no place in this world for me." That despair deepened, his drug use became even more compulsive and and isolation was the norm for the last year of his life. Scare stories would have bounced off that reality like BBs off a military tank.

I am happy for one thing that happened in that last year of my son's life and that is for the open dialogue we were finally able to reach when discussing drugs, addiction and a life out of control; they were hard conversations but they were honest and without judgment. It took education for me as the parent, renewed trust (that had been eroded) as the son, and a clear picture of how the failed policies of the war on drugs were playing out through our little family just like for so many others. I do not have the faith, even with the slightly changed dialogue that is coming out of the opiate epidemic, that this country will ever move away from seeing drug use as a moral failing and a criminal act. I wish I had a more optimistic view. It's not like we don't have the evidence from other more enlightened countries. We are a punishing and moralistic culture--it's in our history and in the very air we breathe.