According to an analysis of national surveys released this week, the number of teenagers abusing prescription drugs has risen to 2.1 million. This includes the abuse of OxyContin, Vicodin, Adderall, and Xanax.

One reason kids experiment with so many different kinds of drugs is because they don’t believe a damn thing society tells them about the subject.

And why should they? So much of it is utter bullshit.

The government is fond of telling us, “Truth is the anti-drug.” Of course, this message often follows a vignette in which a child has shot his friend in the face as a result of smoking marijuana. 100 million Americans watch those ads and know it is total nonsense. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) spends taxpayer money producing propaganda that is intended to keep people afraid of marijuana, but instead produces theater. This breach of trust is dangerous. It is the real gateway.

We know that marijuana education doesn’t work. A National Institute on Drug Abuse study recently found,

“There is little evidence of direct favorable Campaign effects on youth, either for the Marijuana Initiative period or for the Campaign as whole. The trend data in marijuana use is not favorable, and for the primary target audience, 14- to 16-year-olds, past year use increased from 2000 through 2003…In any case, youth who were more exposed to Campaign messages are no more likely to hold favorable beliefs or intentions about marijuana than are youth less exposed to those messages, both during the Marijuana Initiative period and over the entire course of the Campaign.”

This bullshit campaign is dangerous because it paves the way for further experimentation by neutering all of society’s other warnings about substance abuse. We told them the story of the child who cried wolf and they remembered it. Now we are crying ‘marijuana’.

As a society, it is crazy to assume that we can lie our asses off to our children regarding marijuana and expect that they will take our other warnings as seriously as they should. If we care about the next generation, we must earn their trust by telling them the truth. The government has broken this trust and left our children vulnerable. It has failed at its most basic function.

The primary purpose of government is to protect its citizens. Part of that responsibility is to provide health information that common citizens are not capable of collecting themselves. In order for this information to be of any value, the people must be able to trust the source. Marijuana prohibition has destroyed that trust for over 100 million Americans and left our children at risk. To close the gateway, we must stop the lies.