The following excerpt is taken from an article by the Drug Reform Coordination Network in their weekly online newsletter. From The Week Online #176, 3/9/2001:
And while most stoners I know already believe in Zeese's "forbidden fruit" idea, the idea rarely comes up in such focus.
For myself, I didn't smoke pot when I was in high school; I believed the lies about the dangers of marijuana until I read the 1972 Bureau of Narcotics report to Congress. But I went to a high school where they considered banning magnetic locker mirrors because they are so convenient for cutting the lines and lines of cocaine that my more affluent classmates made available.
But largely, as a youth, I only turned drugs down on the grounds that I either didn't like the drug for personal reasons (speed, coke ... I don't think we had a heroin problem), or else that I was uncomfortable standing outside a shopping mall--or under the bleachers, or outside a restaurant where four blue-and-whites are parked--and smoking a joint. Nowadays, that prohibition isn't nearly as strong, but it's not like I was ever fully anti-drug.
What I'm wondering, in general, then, is how people feel about the forbidden fruit idea. Whereas most drug warriors fear an explosion in use and abuse upon legalization, what of this phenomenon reflected among Dutch teens so aptly summed up by Zeese: the Dutch, when they made marijuana available for purchase, said one reason they were doing so was to 'make marijuana boring.
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/#eurostudy is the address of the article for the next few days. I will update it when the site moves the story to its archive.
thanx,
Tiassa
This excerpt is taken from an article considering the results of a recent multinational study of teen substance use. One of the most confounding observations is that teen drug use occurs at a lower rate in places where drugs aren't so darned illegal.
And while most stoners I know already believe in Zeese's "forbidden fruit" idea, the idea rarely comes up in such focus.
For myself, I didn't smoke pot when I was in high school; I believed the lies about the dangers of marijuana until I read the 1972 Bureau of Narcotics report to Congress. But I went to a high school where they considered banning magnetic locker mirrors because they are so convenient for cutting the lines and lines of cocaine that my more affluent classmates made available.
But largely, as a youth, I only turned drugs down on the grounds that I either didn't like the drug for personal reasons (speed, coke ... I don't think we had a heroin problem), or else that I was uncomfortable standing outside a shopping mall--or under the bleachers, or outside a restaurant where four blue-and-whites are parked--and smoking a joint. Nowadays, that prohibition isn't nearly as strong, but it's not like I was ever fully anti-drug.
What I'm wondering, in general, then, is how people feel about the forbidden fruit idea. Whereas most drug warriors fear an explosion in use and abuse upon legalization, what of this phenomenon reflected among Dutch teens so aptly summed up by Zeese: the Dutch, when they made marijuana available for purchase, said one reason they were doing so was to 'make marijuana boring.
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/#eurostudy is the address of the article for the next few days. I will update it when the site moves the story to its archive.
thanx,
Tiassa