D.A.R.E. Went Off On A Tirade Because It Believed A Fake Story About Nine People Dying From Pot Gummies At Coachella
WaPo – “Marijuana candies, sold on the street as ‘Uncle Tweety’s Chewy Flipper’ and ‘Gummy Satans’ are taking the country by storm.” That’s the breathless opening sentence of a news story posted on the website of D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), the infamous anti-drug organization that sends police into schools to teach kids about the dangers of drug use.
After I called to inquire about it, D.A.R.E. removed the story immediately without commenting. But it’s been preserved at the Internet Archive, and I’ve screenshotted it in full below. “It is sad that in a country as developed as America, such third world drugs such as marijuana are allowed to exist,” the story’s anonymous author wrote. “Children are being addicted to marijuana. I knew this day would come, when a liberal president allowed a state to legally sell Marijuana Flintstone Vitamins to children.”
“Marijuana. It is one of the most dangerous drugs on Earth,” the author concludes ominously. “For every one joint of marijuana, four teenagers become burdened with pregnancy.”
The organization’s heyday was in the 1980s and 1990s, when the anti-drug movement was its most intense. D.A.R.E. focused a lot of its energies on discouraging drug use by kids, but multiple studies have found that the program does “little or nothing to combat drug use,” according to Scientific American. Kids enrolled in the program were just as likely to use drugs as those who weren’t, researchers found in 2009.
D.A.R.E. still receives funding from the Justice Department, the Department of State and numerous other government agencies and corporations.
I admit that I don’t know a ton about D.A.R.E. as an organization these days besides them having things at school when I was little and I think their logo also used to always pop up before the Ninja Turtles arcade game? And generally, these are two credible places I turn to for my drug news and advice so I’m really disappointed. But you know what, I can’t hold it against D.A.R.E., we all make mistakes. And the site they got the info from, TopekasNews.com, seems really credible no matter where you look on the page:
The LAMESTREAM MEDIA has been too busy eating marijuana edibles and selling the leftovers to children to pay attention to President Obama cultivating an army of Ebola zombies designed to do his bidding, we all know that. Thank god this remnant of a failed anti-drug administration that’s wasted hundreds of millions of dollars stigmatizing drugs for no reason is still around to smarten us up. I mean FOUR teens pregnant off one joint? Even Shawn Kemp couldn’t manage that. I see now that it’s time to straighten up and fly right, maybe save myself another trip to Planned Parenthood (where everybody knows your name) after tying off to shoot some marijuanas, and I’ve got D.A.R.E. to thank.
(via @t_sievers7)