Posted by potbert on July 05, 1998 at 22:14:55:
In Reply to: Legalize marijuana posted by Chris on July 05, 1998 at 16:58:15:
I think your "Fear of the Law" hypothesis regarding marijuana is one of the principal reasons for the failure of the so-called War on Drugs, with a slight twist. I think that young kids go through a lot of attempted indocterination that is intended to scare them out of trying drugs. Yet eventually, they observe that many kids they know who smoke marijuana aren't suffering the horrors of drug abuse as depicted by groups like DARE. The result is that they end up thinking that they've been lied to about all drugs, and they are much more likely to experiment with some of the drugs that actually *are* dangerous since the adults in their lives exagerated marijuana's dangers. Liars figure and figures lie, but there is data that suggests that DARE students are more likely to use drugs that non-DARE students.