Drug Education – How did/do we Learn?

• Parents/Family
• Friends
• Media – Commercials, News, Movies, Music, Magazines, Internet
• Religion (redirect to “Drugs and Religion”)
• School
• Government (redirect to “War on Drugs”)
• Experimentation

How did you learn about the effects of drugs? Have those opinions changed over time?

Parents and Family – Influence You?

• What are their opinions?
• Do you agree with their stance?
• How did they learn?
• Have their opinions changed over time?
• How did they teach about drugs?
• Have you taught them anything? If so, how?
• Are you a parent?  If so how/what have you and/or will you teach them about drugs?

Friend and Peers – Influence?

• What were their opinions?
• Did they influence your information? If so, how?
• Did you influence them?  If so, how?

Media – Commercials

• What drug commercials do you remember?
• What impact did they have on your opinion/knowledge of drugs?

“This is your brain on drugs. ..Any questions?”

School – What Teachers Say?

• Receive any drug education at school?
• What is appropriate to tell students?

Drug Education – Experimentation?

• If experimented with drugs how closely does your experience match the information/understanding you had of that particular substance?
• Gateway theory
• If experimented have you tried to influence the opinion of others?
• Have others that experimented tried to influence your opinion?  How?

Drug Education – Facts vs Fiction

• Costs/Benefits of purposefully misleading public? (e.g. leading them to believe certain drugs are more or less dangerous than the facts indicate).
• Motives of purposefully misleading?
• Half truths?  (e.g. downside/ without upside and vice versa).
• Rampant ignorance?
• What prevents someone from knowing the truth about drugs?