In a variety of tones ranging from bored to insistent to sardonic, every teacher read 10 pages from “The Truth About Marijuana,” a booklet about the dangers of marijuana use, to their third period last week. The manner in which the facts were presented made it difficult for students to absorb an important message: “don’t do drugs.”While educating students about the harmful effects of marijuana was a good idea, having teachers simply read booklets to their classes was an ineffective way to address subject. The information would have had a greater impact if students had heard first-hand accounts from former marijuana users in an assembly-type setting.
Parents wanted the administration to raise awareness about the effects of marijuana after recent forums on alcohol abuse, principal Alan Goodwin said. The in-class sessions represented just another effort to keep students safe and informed, but their delivery diluted the important message.
The booklet from which teachers were asked to read was outdated—the surveys cited were conducted in 2008 or earlier—and some of the facts were simply incorrect. The pamphlet stated, for example, that unlike marijuana, alcohol doesn’t affect the immune system, thus making marijuana more dangerous in that respect. However, this information is false; alcohol also weakens the immune system, increasing chances of getting certain bacterial infections, according to an NIH study.
Goodwin acknowledged the booklet had some flaws, but he agreed to distribute it because of its low cost and important information.
In plenty of classes, teachers took the subject seriously and supplemented the booklet with personal stories about marijuana use. Other teachers had students take turns reading passages. But in some classes the teacher and/or students cracked jokes about the pamphlet. Many students left the pamphlet behind or recycled them.
Having teachers read 10 pages of a pamphlet for 15 minutes isn’t going to prevent students from smoking marijuana. Pop culture and peer pressure are strong influences. Students can’t take seriously a booklet with clichéd accounts of marijuana users. Statements like, “I started using on a lark, a dare from a best friend who said that I was too chicken to smoke a joint” or “The teacher in the school I went to would smoke three or four joints a day. He got lots of students to start smoking joints, me included” didn’t impress students as much as live personal accounts could have.
Perhaps the one positive aspect of the sessions was the opportunity for teachers to discuss the Student Assistance Program, which helps students who already use drugs or alcohol. Unfortunately, not all teachers covered this information, and those who did lost their legitimacy in the booklet discussions. Next time the administration should take a different approach.
A. Geek • Mar 13, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Whitman’s administration treats alcohol in the same way – starting with facts and then distorting them. The section on alcohol in the student handbook is quite misleading, thanks to selective citations and lack of context.
a parent • Mar 7, 2011 at 3:32 pm
A much more helpful exercize would have been to have students look at this pamphlet and actually discuss the danger of overstepping fact for the sake of policy.
Propagenda like this pamphlet is both infuriating and ultimately self defeating. It’s a lot like telling a teen, “.. masturbation will give you warts and make you go blind…”. Years of experience tells any teen that it’s not true, and thereafter every pronouncement (whether viable or not) become a lie until proven otherwise.
The failure to distinguish marijuana from harmful substances does a huge disservice in that it makes equals of relatively harmless substances (e.g. marijuana) with terribly harmful and addictive ones (e.g. methamphetamine).
When one considers that that for the last 40 years there has been a population in the US of tens of millions of regular users, and there seems to be no evidence of any downside from an epedemiological perpective, (in fact, a number of studies suggest a possible prohylaxis against both lung cancer and some forms of dementia), the kneejerk response looks more like an appeal to tradition than to reason.
another student • Mar 2, 2011 at 10:38 am
I agree with the first commenter. Actually, as a debater, I have had to research marijuana multiple times, and I know for a fact that a lot of the things on that pamphlet were overexaggerated.
average student • Mar 1, 2011 at 9:20 am
i agree. When reading i knew a few of the facts and surveys were BS. Just giving one false facts destroys the entire credibility of the pampthlet.