DOWN WITH DARE

Thanks for your DARE article (Wayne's Word, Dec. 3). Thanks to Police Chief
Beckner and Sheriff Epp for putting DARE out of its misery, and ours.

Upon reading your article, my son, who is a high school senior, commented,
perhaps with a little pride, that he was the only one in his class who
doesn't use drugs.

We did not allow the school to indoctrinate him with the DARE curriculum.
Instead, he spent his time in voluntary community service working with
kindergartners and first graders which he completely enjoyed.

As a, now, drug-free parent, and aging, very experienced drug using member
of my culture, my view on drugs and what I conveyed to him was that my
experience shows "pot" to have a distracting influence on our normal, daily
existence, (i.e. laboring and consuming for a global corporate economy). For
him this manifests in successfully graduating from high school.

I asked him to be aware of this, and observe it in school life. I never
suggested that "pot" is bad or good. I did tell him that heroin and cocaine
are addictive, and drugs like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and peyote have
special qualities that can open one's mind to dimensions of awareness most
people don't normally experience. I provided him with my insights and
information on drugs and drug experiences.

As you said-if we teach our kids math and reading they use it. If we teach
drugs they use it. If we teach sex, (you left that one out), they use it.
If, instead, we allow them the freedom to "learn" about all these things; if
they could become aware of their relationship to others, to their
environment, to their world, and how all these things effect those
relationships, they might, perhaps, create and new and different, better
world, of which they might feel a part. Perhaps drug use in our society
might become less narcissistic and more practical, more sacred in its
nature. Perhaps drug "abuse" might end.

Drugs have been used in every culture the world has seen. Drug use is
intrinsic to society.

It will not be controlled, or stopped.

The drug war is a lie.

Checked-by: Don Beck