High School Drug Policy: Striving for Underachievement

It just looks like more "collateral damage", which I intrerpret as "They don't even matter, anyway!" How many innocent kids will be prosecuted and damaged because of this fear people have of drugs and alcohol use by kids? Throwing the baby out with the bath-water, was never a WISE thing to do! But, the wisdom seems to be lacking in, so many of, these stories! Another rung in the ladder for the police state!

I liked your post. So much of the rhetoric about drugs in schools is trying to tell kids how doing drugs will ruin their lives. So we kick them off their sports teams, prevent them from serving in leadership positions, and label them as delinquents and they do end up having their lives fucked up.

Scaring kids into fearing to hang around their friends, or convincing kids to drop out of sports for their friends... what a great set of options.

Matt Potter

From the viewpoint of the perpetrators of social exclusion or ostracism, much is accomplished. After all, those who define virtue also define who rises to power and who does not.

At least that was the case for marijuana until the predawn presidency of Bill Clinton and the sunset kingship of cocaine vacuum George W. Bush. Prior drug use certainly hasn’t slowed down Senator Obama’s current march to the Whitehouse. Perhaps the message being conveyed by the drug warriors regarding their peculiar stance on virtue is more Darwinian; for instance, not “don’t do drugs”, but rather “don’t get caught doing drugs”.

In practice, ostracism is a cult-like tactic that elevates the ostracizers, in their own minds at least, to a social plateau well above those deemed inferior. This self-elevation does not necessarily reflect reality in the drug war or anything else. Those with the courage and curiosity to experiment with drugs at some stage in their lives are also likely to be more open to new possibilities and therefore more adaptable to change. This adaptive behavior normally translates into greater success in life. In fact, research at Berkeley has confirmed this by comparing drug using students with non-drug users. Yet, these potentially fruitful citizens are some of the same people being denied college loans for being caught with drugs.

Irrational conformity for the sake of irrational conformity is a common tool of oppression. Arbitrarily imposing such conformity on a nation drives a social and political wedge between those rational and intelligent enough to see through the phony agenda that supports a conformist dogma, and the remainder of those who are ignorant, arrogant, stupid or blindly obedient.

Quick disposal is made of those perceivably troublesome people who think, who are rational and intelligent (the “elites”, as they’re disparagingly tagged by members of the authoritarian religious right).

The remaining pool of obedient, anti-rationalist, know-nothings is thereby more easily identified, selected and inherently motivated to work against their own best interests, and to commit profit-motivated human rights atrocities against minorities and third world peoples in the name of some religious, nationalist, or ethnocentric fervor.

The conformists can also be uniquely depended upon to perpetrate and condone violations of the U.S. Constitution in ways that make all but a few wealthy and well-connected Americans as vulnerable and helpless in the face of totalitarian corruption as any third world inhabitant.

Much is accomplished in similar ways. The drug war and its “ostracism is OK” edict being taught by example in secondary public schools, achieved by kicking people out of athletics and school clubs for drugs, perpetuates by pattern some of the last vestiges of racism, with effects falling on the disproportionate numbers of minorities in the United States who get arrested for drugs.

Giordano

And America deplores communism because it is too controlling and doesn’t let people live their lives the way they see fit? <-- thanks for that stupid comment. american capitalism makes soviet communism look like a failure in terms of achieving control over it's population. control is the name of the game here. what do you think these piss tests at the job place are all about...? actually stopping drug use or keeping the workers in line?

It sounds like the previous posts are saying, if you use drugs you're usually a free thinking, outgoing, well rounded individual. Hello, are you all on crack? They're addicted to something that saps their will and self control. You people are the kind that chant, "Leave them alone!" and then sit back while the schools go to crap and say, "It must be the teachers fault." Even more likely, the only exposure you've had to a good time had drugs and booze involved in some way.