Don’t Ask Alice: Aiden DARES to ask for some actual drug education

When I was thirteen, I was hustled onto the New Zealand famous Life Education bus. I’m sure you all remember the excitement of seeing this bus in your school’s parking lot, knowing that some day soon you would be heading onboard. In primary school, it was all about recycling and the human body. What other wonders did Harold have to show us now that we had matured into preteens?? 
 
As I stepped onboard, I remember a pit forming in my stomach. Adorning the walls were photos of syringes, empty bottles, men and women in various states of euphoria and despair alike. Spoons filled with newly cooked heroin, a lone joint in an ashtray, a main passed out in a gutter. But amongst all of them, a picture of a man in a raggedy jacket, face in a brown paper bag, visibly red as he presumably inhales something he probably shouldn’t. 

I am not exaggerating when I say that image in particular scarred me and was the cause of many a nightmare or intrusive thought while I was alone.  

And that imagery was just the start. Over the span of a few weeks, the idea of dying with a needle in my arm if I dared look in the general direction of a joint was shot into me. A spooky prerecorded English woman read us a poem opening with this stanza –  

So now, little man, you've grown tired of grass 
LSD, goofballs, cocaine, and hash, 
and someone, pretending to be a true friend, 
said, "I'll introduce you to Miss Heroin." 

It’s hard to get across how scary this whole scenario was at the time, how bone chillingly grim the experience on the bus was. 

A few years later, year 10 to be specific, I was herded onto yet another bus to talk to a man from the army. He asked if any of us had friends who smoked weed. Most of us did, which prompted him to tell us that weed in New Zealand was sold to dealers by pirates who got it for cheap from ISIS. That’s right, according to him, my so-called-mates were directly funding terrorist groups overseas. How shocking and diabolical. 

Jokes aside, those are the only things I remember from substance education in school. The fear, and the outlandish claims. Scare tactics used to dissuade from drug use instead of providing education. Despite these scare tactics, people will still do what they want, and that includes trying weed or E or anything else they might come across. Why try to bully and scare children into not using, instead of educating on the effects of substance use, physical and mental? This article is in no way pro-drugs or anti-drugs, but it is pro-education on the matter.  

Because some of the “education” about this stuff back in the day was downright terrible, and today… well, read on and you’ll see. 

Then 

Go Ask Alice 

Why don’t we begin with this article’s namesake, and my favourite piece of anti-drug weirdness.  

Go Ask Alice is a 1971 novel, allegedly the journal of a 15-year-old girl that had been discovered and published for all the world to see. The journal documents an unnamed teenage girl’s steady decent into the world of drug addiction, seeing her become a heroin addict and prostitute by the age of 16. 
Essentially the unnamed protagonist’s drug journey begins when they drink cola spiked with LSD at a party, leading them to start taking drugs with party attendees, steal their parent’s sleeping pills, and engage in sex. Eventually, protagonist meets a friend called Chris, they get boyfriends who provide drugs, one night the girls come home to find the guys stoned and having sex with each other. 

This all sounds like a really reductive plot summary, which admittedly it is, but also I think it goes to show the ridiculousness of the book. It’s blatant scare tactics. Do drugs one time and you WILL end up an addict, also cheap shot at homosexuality because the year this chapter is set is 1968.  

“But Aiden, it can’t be scare tactics! It’s literally a published diary!” 

It’s not really a diary. The title Go Ask Alice is an on-the-nose nod to Jefferson Airplane’s song White Rabbit. A woman called Beatrice Sparks wrote it, even though she claims to have merely “discovered” it. She has written multiple of these types of fictional journals which all deal with different topics teens in the early ‘70s would’ve faced, such as indoctrination into a satanic cult. She also has another book called Almost Lost where a teenager dabbles in “rap, the occult, and drugs”, but becomes a happier healthier person after attending therapy… with Sparks herself. 

Also, according to Wikipedia, she claimed to have held a PhD that no one could find any records of. Not relevant, just thought it was funny. 

Basically, Beatrice Sparks was a huckster and Go Ask Alice is not real in the slightest. The likelihood of going to a party where every drink is laced with LSD is astronomically low and ultimately is a premise designed to scare the reader into thinking drugs are around every corner. 

Go Ask Alice is an earlier example of scaring people into avoiding substances, but it wasn’t the most widespread.  

Those damn PSAs 

If you were a child in the’ 80s in America, there’s a chance that a man dressed as Mario appeared on TV to warn you against smoking crack. While I do not think you should smoke crack, I do think people should’ve been told this in a far classier manner than Mario telling them that crack is bad. The irony is that Mario eats more shrooms than a 40-year-old at a Tool concert who’s trying to recapture their youth, so whoever thought of making him an anti-drugs mascot obviously didn’t think that through. While memorable, Mario talking drugs is just the surface level. PSAs ranged from the silly to downright horrifying. This is Your Brain on Drugs is yet another famous example with a few variations, the most well-known being a woman breaking an egg in her pan while saying the famous line, before smashing up her kitchen, each different object destroyed representing another part of your life that is obliterated by ‘drugs’. Nothing specific, just… drugs. The majority of these videos didn’t acknowledge the differences between substances, and that weed and heroin are not the same thing, despite what these PSAs want you to think. 

The anti-drug PSA was a staple of the ‘war on drugs era’ in the USA, not just on the TVs but in the arcades too. A lot of the war on drugs specifically targeted youth, with PSAs appearing on arcade machines before games, and even an anti-drug game called Narc being produced.  

The “winners don’t use drugs” slogan found itself plastered in arcades between 1989 and 2000. Not using scare tactics to put off people from drug usage, but guilt. While a lot of PSAs surrounding hard drugs focused on horror, with imagery that could leave Junji Ito with a tummy ache, winners don’t use drugs was more subdued. This message would be displayed on an arcade cabinet during ‘attract mode’, the period where a cabinet is idling and screening a pre-recorded demo. Essentially cabinets not in use would display the slogan before starting another viewing of the demo. Once more, tactics designed to push people away from drugs as opposed to actually teaching the facts. 

But that was then, have things progressed? 

Now 

Life Education 

We’ve touched on my experience already, so I won’t repeat myself. The programme I was referring to earlier was called From the Shadows at the school I attended. I do believe that the school named the programme this, as I reached out to Life Education and found out From the Shadows is actually the title of the programme’s video element, not the programme itself.  

Introduced in 2001, From the Shadows is a video story which is based around the impacts of addiction, following several characters and their stories. Instead of villainising drugs overall, to me it sounds like showing how awful addiction is, how it can totally destroy lives. Outside of that video, AOD (alcohol and other drug) education is still very much apart of Life Ed’s Healthy Harold programme, along with a further alcohol education component called Smashed being provided to Year Nine and Ten students.  

Overall, Life Education’s drug education has evolved from the space it was in when I attended school, taking a look at the wider societal impacts and influences of substances today. Unfortunately, I am not entirely sure what this means or looks like, so for now we can only hope that it’s teaching more about the substances themselves than it did back then.  

AOD – Levels 4-8 in The New Zealand Curriculum 

I stumbled upon a very large document outlining the drug education curriculum in New Zealand, aimed at students between Year 7 and Year 13. 

This curriculum is up-to-date as of 2021, and I doubt it’s been reformed since then so it’s the best look into recent drug education we have at this second. 

Part 1 of this curriculum starts with defining and classifying drugs, as well as language surrounding drugs and alcohol. While a guideline can only show so much as it doesn’t lay out the education itself, it’s looking promising. This portion of the programme provides links to the NZ Drug Foundation’s site, specifically the area which actually talks about different types of substances. Instead of everything being classed under drugs, the education is now discussing the differences between weed and the harder stuff. 

NZ Drug foundation outlines some more specific info about each type too, linking to resources that discuss effects, how to be safer while using, and how to cut down on usage. The resources provided, from TheLevel, also have cautionary advice, such as recommending fentanyl testing if you’re using heroin.  

Overall, the state of drug education in the school curriculum, in Aotearoa at least, seems to be leaning more in the direction of education with the acknowledgement that people will still use drugs. Building up knowledge instead of scaring people off is the best way to handle this type of education, and it should have been this way from the start. 

Aiden’s take 

So, here’s where I give my proper two cents, as if I have not been dropping that in every chance I can get: 

Spooking people, especially kids and teens, out of taking drugs is just silly. It doesn’t work and doesn’t equip them properly for scenarios later in life that could potentially involve drugs. I was told that I shouldn’t play Halo when I was a kid because I’d get in deep trouble and it would rot my brain, so of course I played Halo every chance I could. Scare tactics put concepts on pedestals, villainising them, making them larger than life. And what happens when someone discovers the so-called devil’s lettuce doesn’t make you into a hardened criminal after one puff? They realise a lot of what they’ve heard is phooey and become disillusioned with everything they’re told. That’s when overdoses or other harmful occurrences can happen, not just because the young people are taking drugs but because they’re taking them without any real education on the substances. 

Drug education NEEDS to educate. Substances are everywhere in our society; we’re becoming more desensitised to it and a little more open to the idea of recreational use. Drug testing at festivals is a good start, but we need to go further. People who want to use WILL use, so they should be given the proper knowledge early on regarding drug safety, potential long-term effects, as well as the complete set of facts and a dispelling of the fiction. 

Despite everything their mums tell them, kids who want to play Halo will play Halo, so let’s make sure they’re given the knowledge to play Halo safely.