Posted by Tony Bylsma on August 1, 2011 under Drug Abuse Prevention Education | 
A man just left my office with a plan to speak to students in chapters of his old fraternity around the nation regarding the drug problems being found in the various chapters.
He had come to me for suggestions on how to approach the administration in the fraternities home office so they would support his efforts with at least travel expenses, he is willing to do work for free, but can’t run all over the US without at least expense money.
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Posted by Tony Bylsma on March 14, 2011 under Drug Abuse Prevention Education |
Obviously, Alcohol and Marijuana are both mind altering drugs. And obviously there are people who drink once in a while and people 
who smoke once in a while. So, is there a difference? Well, yes. And the difference is not small.
When a person has a drink at a party, or a beer at a ball game or picnic, their purpose for doing that is not necessarily to get drunk. If becoming ‘high’ is the goal, they won’t stop at one. Having a glass of wine with dinner is another example. One glass of wine is more like a food than a Drug. The reason for having it is most certainly for the taste or to enhance the food.
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Posted by Tony Bylsma on October 13, 2010 under Drug Abuse Prevention Education |
I was asked in a high school class again today, “What is the war against drugs?” It seems an easy question to field, but I found myself stumbling on my answer.
The phrase itself is an obvious misnomer, The War on Drugs? What do they do, line the drugs up against a wall and machine-gun them down?
Or do we declare war on anything we feel unable to overcome? The war on poverty, the war on illiteracy, and the war on just about anything you really can’t face. It doesn’t make much sense.
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Posted by Tony Bylsma on July 23, 2010 under Drug Abuse Prevention Education |
Police and Moonshiner
I gave my usual answer, “They couldn’t make tobacco illegal if they wanted to. We don’t have enough police or a big enough army to enforce a law like that.” She and about thirty other faces kept looking at me; it was obvious, to them anyway, that wasn’t a satisfactory answer.
I said, “They tried to make alcohol illegal, back in the 1920s, and it didn’t work.”
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Posted by Tony Bylsma on July 19, 2010 under Drug Abuse Prevention Education |
A kid asked me in school today if he was going to become addicted to alcohol. I was a bit shaken by this question. I was in a very affluent area of South Pasadena and saw unusually few signs of drug abuse in the class. (Unusually few for a California public high school, anyway.)
I asked if he thought he was going have a drinking problem & he said yes, his father and uncles are heavy drinkers and his grandfather died of alcoholism.
It was pretty clear that the entire class was waiting for an answer and I wanted to not screw this one up.
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A man just left my office with a plan to speak to students in chapters of his old fraternity around the nation regarding the drug problems being found in the various chapters.
