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 By Jack Lepiarz July 4, 2006 "Captain Jack will get you high tonight." --Billy Joel For most of my senior year, I was the head of the Personal Development Program at my school, and was kind of the poster-boy for the anti-drug and alcohol program. I got the nickname Captain Jack especially because of the Billy Joel song, but also because of some other reasons involving Johnny Depp and one of my Jacks of all time. After Jack Abramoff, of course. Talk about a fine, upstanding man, right there. Allow me to say that, of all the programs I was involved in (and the list is quite extensive), I was most ashamed of that one. Not out a particular love for drugs or alcohol, but more out of the whole situation (ordeal works too) being a major headache for much of the year that I had planned to spend relaxing. Furthermore, it also incredibly frustrating having to explain to people my personal view on what the program stood for. I first entered the program as a junior, mostly planning to use it as something on my college application. But when I was unexpectedly elected to be the head of the program, I decided that I might as well try to improve it while I was there. I was in for a very unpleasant surprise. Basically, I was a very strong supporter of the program. Here's the problem though: drug education hasn't improved since the 1950's (a trend that applies to most of high school). It's the same old "drugs are bad, just say no" approach, which does nothing other than give kids something to joke about. Worse yet are the school assemblies--where we would be forced to listen to someone stupid enough to venture into a high school auditorium to give a talk about drugs and alcohol. For anyone that ever aspires to do that: don't. Because here's the Catch-22: the kids that really need help are already too doped up (they probably smoked up in the bathroom just before the assembly) to actually get anything out of it, and the kids that don't need the assembly are just bored out of their minds. So really, nothing gets done, except that I might have gotten out of my English class (one of the few classes I enjoyed this year, oddly enough). If this were an isolated case, I wouldn't mind. But it's not. The school spends thousands of dollars on drug education to prevent us "impressionable children" from engaging in unsafe behavior--like taking drugs. But it doesn't do anything because the way they go about it is the "Just Say No" approach that Nancy Reagan tried to pass off as intelligence 20 years ago. And it still doesn't work. Take it from the kid that just spent four years having it crammed into his head year after year after year after year. It's an old, useless system, and if you, the adults, want to keep children off of drugs, then you need a system that works. What you're using now is not working. ------------ About the author: Jack Lepiarz is a senior at Madison High School. Born in Waco, Texas, he lived with the Big Apple Circus for much of his early childhood, eventually moving to Madison, New Jersey, where he now resides. Although he is often described as stubborn and egotistical, he tries to keep an open-mind towards new ideas and treat people the way he would like to be treated. Email: Jackwuzhere42@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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