How has Recreational Drug Use Become Digital?
As a Psychology student, I became very interested in drug addiction after taking a class called Psych of Substance Abuse. The class covered the history of substance abuse and how humans came to the point of recreational drug abuse. One thing the class did not cover was the future of drug abuse. Some might argue that the digitlization of recreational abuse has many negative consequences but in reality there are many positives as well.
The first time recreational drug use became digital was in 1995 on a website called Erowid. Erowid is a very basic forum that allows recreational drug users to research any psychoactive substance and read “experience reports,” which are posted by anonymous users. While Erowid was gaining popularity, young adults were being taught about recreational drugs in school via the dare program. These two sources of information deeply contrasted one another. The dare program famously spread a lot of misinformation about drug use as a scare tactic while Erowid was intended as a way for users to get real information about recreational drugs from direct sources.
I would argue that telling teens the truth is the right way to educate about recreational abuse. Especially because in reality the truth is scary enough. Spreading misinformation can lead to mistrust and the intention of keeping kids off drugs might be lost entirely.
Picture Via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erowid