June 10, 2004

• Somebody alert tracicle that this site will be undergoing the standard Internet Onslaught from Scientology Inc. in three... two...
• Scientology or not, when drug education contains lies it makes the drug problem worse. The kids will eventually discover that they've been lied to, and will no longer believe anything they've been told with regard to drug use.
• drugs R bad, mmmkay?
• shawnj: Yes, this is cut and dried wrong. Some toxic stuff, such as heavy metals (mercury and lead, for example), can be stored in fat indefinitely, but the sweating it out and niacin stuff is just plain hooey. And, as the link says, illegal drugs don't happen to be among the chemicals that get stored for long periods in fat. The whole anti-drug education thing makes me very uncomfortable, despite the fact that I obviously hope my kid doesn't take drugs when he's older. It just seems too much like indoctrination rather than real education to me. That scientologists are out there telling blatant lies to the kids just makes it that much worse.
• rocket88, precisely - it's important that kids develop opinions on their own after considering the facts rather than smoke and mirror psychology provided by our friends in situ with Xenu. An effective anti-drug campaign helps a nation economically - lower healthcare, less legal problems, produces higher wage earners - but first you need to give kids a reason to live! The one way to make children feel that life is a meaningless bureaucracy, is to expose them to constant reverse psychology which plays upon the very critical emotions and natural reactions that we possess to keep us alive and thinking.
• I've always thought, if we can't keep kids from doing drugs by telling them the truth, maybe we oughtn't bother. Instead of "hey kid, don't smoke pot because it'll kill you and is evil," how about "hey kid, don't smoke pot because it will expose you to some unsavory characters; instead, campaign for legalization and regulation!" But maybe that's just me. On top of it, these lies are quite a bit worse than the D.A.R.E. bunk I was exposed to. I heard all sorts of horror stories about escalating heartrates and strokes and permanent memory loss and flashbacks (all of which are within the realm of possibility, however twisted). This stuff is just irresponsible and dangerous. The first time I smoked pot I felt like my heart was going to burst, but I was prepared for it because D.A.R.E. warned me that I might have a stroke or heart attack. But if I knew only that it would scramble my mental images and hang around in my fat forever ... well, I might have freaked out.
• First of all, if you don't openly admit that drugs make you feel good, you're not going to get anywhere with kids, because that's the one fact they do know. You do that and they'll know you're not bullshitting them. Then tell them the drawbacks. With pot it's chronic apathy and reduced motivation, which makes it hard to hold a decent job. With coke it's the rapid disappearance of all your money.
• rocket88 has the right idea. Vicodin makes you fall down. X makes you want to hug yucky people.
• FWIW, THC is, I believe, fat-soluble. This is helpful to know if you are making pot brownies.
• rocket88: Amen, to both your posts. When it comes to drugs (and sex) and kids, people tend to lose all common sense. We are a culture ruled by fear.
• Church and state, anyone?
• This is a brilliant plan. After all, what the world clearly needs is more religion, especially of the litigous, prosetylizing variety. And where's it most needed? Schools, of course! Get them while they're young!
• Scientology is so ardent about its status as a religion (thus tax-free) rather than a cult (thus, tax-able I guess) but very hip to legal/business/PR opportunities like keeping NarCONon, Applied Scholastics, and of course the Citizens Commission on Human Rights as publicly separate as possible. Also: one of the things the article doesn't mention is that to Scientologists, ALL drugs are well..drugs. Including things like Prozac, Ritalin, and um, Lipitor, etc. because illness is all in your head (including AIDS). Pychiatrists and the drugs they pimp out are about the evilest thing going as far as L. Ron Hubbard was concerned. [Anyway. I know too much about this. And, that's Danny Masterson, by the way, You May Remember Him as Hyde from TV's That 70s Show.]
• ...what the world clearly needs is more religion, especially of the litigous, prosetylizing variety. +1 funny [OT: hello and welcome to mofi, ilyadeux]
• *rolls a fat one, sits back*
• ilyadeux: This is something that always struck me as odd in the US. Surely the IRS making decisions about whether you qualify as a "real religion" is a de facto breach of the first amendment?
• The IRS didn't judge whether the CoS qualifies as a "real" religion. It doesn't have that authority. As I understand it, all the IRS decided was that CoS is a for-profit organization that charges its members fees (no matter how they may try to dress them up as "donations" or "tithes") and therefore didn't qualify for tax-exempt status. (It's been a long time since I've studied this, so I could be wrong here. Let me know if I am.) All religious organizations in the US fall under the same standard. The IRS can't tax what goes into a church's offering plate, because that's a voluntary donation to a nonprofit. But if the church were to buy a house and rent it to someone with the intent of turning a profit, even though that profit may be used to benefit the church, it's still a for-profit endeavour and therefore taxable. Yeah, there's room for quite a bit of grey there. In its investigation the IRS concluded that CoS's normal means of making money fell under that standard. They also concluded that Hubbard was bilking his followers out of quite a bit of green. They also weren't too enamored of the fact that Scientology got caught with files stolen from their own offices and those of the FBI. So they decided it was time to drop the hammer. Dozens of lawsuits later, they cried "uncle."