With the current fentanyl (and meth?) problem.
I just asked my 12-year old, and he says he’s learning about this in his health class right now.
Fentanyl: “Only a very small amount will kill you. They are often laced in street drugs and stuff bought from the internet.”
Opioids: “They’re like painkillers and numb your senses and thoughts. They can make your slower and weird.” (that’s all he was told)
Nothing on the other stuff yet.
He’s said that his teacher had a relative die from fentanyl. She’s very passionate about drug education, from what he says, and notes that she hasn’t ever said that “all drugs are bad” or anything like that.
She’s also apparently brought in nurses and doctors to help with explanations and information about certain drugs. No cops, apparently, which thank god. Hopefully it stays that way.
So far, I’m very happy with the kind of drug education he’s getting. I supplement it with more in-depth, one-on-one conversations, as well. Not all drugs are evil, and I let him know that.
I asked my cousins who are in high school. They don’t seem to be fed as much moral panic bullshit as I was. People who smoke marijuana aren’t doomed to hell, drug users aren’t all “worthless” welfare drags. It goes hand in hand with the improved education they are getting on mental health and addiction.
The main scare push sounds to be around drugs of unknown provenance. Like, don’t take unknown pills offered to you at a party where you can be whisked away by a stranger once you drop unconscious. Or die a painful death due to dirty drugs cut with who knows what.
Their school has Narcan doses in the med station.
Our town used to have a needle program but current leadership tipped back more conservative and they got rid of those types of programs. My cousins think that’s bullshit; they are well aware of the low efficacy of abstinence-only programs.
I asked them if they knew about the old D.A.R.E. program of the 80s and 90s. One had a decent idea of what it was, the other thought it was a meme; she had only ever seen ~millenial-aged casual drug users wear D.A.R.E T-shirts so she thought the whole thing was meant to be ironic.
For context, I grew up in the Midwest US, middle school and high school from the late 90s into the early 00s. The referenced cousins and I live in New England now.
We were supposed to talk about drugs for 2 years, but instead talked about bullying
We got a school project about drugs a couple years ago, but it was only one option out of a list of subjects for the project(i think, i dont remember exactly)
graduated not too long ago, it was basically pure misinformation. the typical one touch will murder you, it’ll ruin your life, with a dash of shaming people who have addictions.
With fentanyl specifically, that’s not too far off lol
That being said, drugs are great m’kay
Yeah, this is not the best question because you’ll get very different answers from different parts of the world, or even different parts of the US.
I graduated more than a decade ago, and there was a lot more nuance than what you described. They taught us about different types of drugs and what their real effects were. I remember learning in high school that marijuana is less dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol.
In elementary school for me, there were big anti-smoking campaigns, but nothing about alcohol or harder drugs. The “just say no” was about peer pressure and doing anything you felt uncomfortable doing (including inappropriate touching).
There are school-aged people on Lemmy? I assumed the vast majority are older millennials (with a touch of gray), who are also Linux users, not straight, and have some level of obsession with Star Trek and — God knows why — beans.
I feel like it’s mostly minors here
There’s a reason why they call us Gen Xers the forgotten generation…
Sorry for the Gen X erasure 😞
I’m 13, straight and not a big fan of star trek.
I do use Linux, though.
Same. I also hate BEANS.
am teenager
am also need time to move to linux
I am 17 but linux and not being straight do check out lol
Maybe you’re an older millennial at heart?
nah man, I don’t wanna get old :(
Mid-30s millenial here. Being an adult, instead of a 20-something young adult is overall pretty great. Having experinence and maturity makes a lot of shit easier, especially dropping uninportant bullshit. Definitely the best decade of my life thus far.
The downside: unaddressed physical, emotional, and psychological “battle damage” is cumulative (I only started treatment for ADHD at 30). So, if you have any untreated issues or trauma, it’s best to take them on earlier so that you don’t have to play catch-up.
That said, enjoy your life and keep in mind that, short of severe injury or imprisonment, you are not going to irreparably damage your future (repair is possible in some of those cases anyway). I didn’t start my career (completely unrelated to my degree) until I was about 26. My wife, who is a year younger than me, earned her union card in her trade last year, after dealing with nearly 30 years of untreated physical and psychological issues. Despite this, we’re both happier on average than any other point in our lives.
Me either 😞 I’m 41 and I still remember most of 17 very clearly because it was a very good year for me. But man, the years will just start whizzing by you the older you get. Sometimes it feels like 17 was just 5 or at most 10 years ago.
My advice is if you don’t want to feel like you’re getting older (and it happens to all of us) is stay active and avoid monotony. Doing the same monotonous thing day after day (ie most jobs) means you don’t make as many “waypoint” memories - when you get old like me it’s the big events that move away from the monotony that you tend to remember, and if you don’t have many of those big events it feels like no time has passed at all since you have very memory of that period. We don’t remember the daily commute to work, the endless meetings, etc., but we tend to remember things like travelling or the first time with a new lover or emotionally-strong events like a death or marriage. In short: make lots of memories!
Oh man. I was miserable in my teens and much of my twenties. The majority of the time that I think back is to unfairly judge myself on data or maturity that I didn’t have and cringe (which is a habit that I’m working on breaving). Overall sound advice, from my experience though.
very good advice, thank you.
2005 kid who just got into uni. Straight, moderate, Linux user
Pro tip: if you want to mess with an older millennial, say something like “I was born in 2005… Yeah I’ll be turning 19 this year” to which the older millennial will say “the fuck? 19? But 2005 was like 5 years ago” and then watch them proceed to have an existential crisis.
Also: it’s cool to see so many younger people using Linux. I remember my friends and I in high school all trying Slackware Linux and congratulating anyone that actually got it to work with all their hardware.
Better yet, im running it on a Mac :P (see asahi Linux)
Neat! Does it recognise all of the hardware? How does it perform?
They’ve made almost everything work! On M1 and M2 models, only things that don’t work are: thunderbolt, USBC displays and Touch ID. Vulkan support is on the works, and everything else works amazing
