DARE Quietly Removes Cannabis From List of Gateway Drugs

Yes, you read that headline correctly.  The well-known drug and alcohol prevention program for kids, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), has quietly removed cannabis from its list of "gateway" drugs.  And they apparently have also stopped lying to kids about the purported dangers of cannabis in general as well.  That is probably because the recent evidence that debunked their previous propaganda has been overwhelming.  And that is a sign that "reefer sanity" is slowly starting to return to America.

DARE's current list of "gateway" drugs can be found on this page of their website.  Note that only two substances remain on that list:  1) tobacco, and 2) alcohol, in that order.  And even the part about alcohol, with warnings against the dangers of "underage" drinking, interestingly enough makes no specific mention of what the legal drinking age is or should be, as the actual words "twenty-one" and "21" are literally nowhere to be found in the text.  It does, however, note that 90% of young people will experiment with alcohol by age 18, and that only a small number abstain completely while an even smaller number become addicted and need help.  And the page encourages parents to, among other things, be good role models as far as alcohol and tobacco are concerned (which is important as that addresses the real pink elephant in the room).  Overall, DARE has really come a long way it seems, and we hope their recent progress continues.

We at Twenty-One Debunked should note, however, that we believe that the whole "gateway theory" (which should really be called the "gateway hypothesis") has been grossly overstated at best, even as far as alcohol and tobacco are concerned.  A few years ago, we wrote an in-depth article about this phenomenon, which the best evidence strongly suggests is really nothing more than a socially-constructed narrative.  Constructed by prohibition laws, disingenuous propaganda, and ageism/adultism, that is.