a story

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Home : 2003 : October : 25

a story
By sj

A couple of years ago we were doing Red Ribbon week and had an assembly in which the local police officer brought his drug dog, talked about the evils of drugs, and at the end carried a pound of marijuanna around for the
group of children to look at. When we got back to the classroom, my students (1st graders) were very excited, sharing that they knew what that stuff was, and that "Daddy says it just helps him relax" and "My sister has some of that", etc. My first shock was how many of them were reporting that they had seen the stuff on a regular basis at home and how openly they were discussing it--as

if they were saying they had a puppy like the policeman's at home! The bigger shock came when I gathered them together and said something to the effect that the "weed" the policeman showed them might be one of the first drugs they would be asked to take. My students were shocked to learn that "weed", "joints", and "pot" were marijuana--and that they were drugs! They had just sat through a 45 minute anti-drug assembly and shouted out "Don't do drugs!" with great enthusiasm, but not until I used some familiar slang did they realize that their parents and siblings were already taking "drugs"!