We had a bunch of them when I was growing up. Some of them were cool, and were just talking about pursuing the arts and stuff. Some were annoying propagandists, trying to convince children that war is dope and that they should enlist. But some of the anti-drug ones were fucked up.

I distinctly remember this one speaker who told us this long, depressing story about how addiction caused him to become so poor that he had to steal food and toilet paper for his family, that he had to break into people’s homes to steal their valuables to buy more drugs, that he spent 20 years in the prison system before finally getting out and getting sober and making something of his life… Then after like 30 minutes of this story, he says “None of that actually happened, but it COULD have, if I gave in to the temptations of marijuana.”

And I was only like 9 or 10 at the time, but even then I was old enough to recognize when my intelligence had been insulted. This man sat there and pulled at our heartstrings for a full half hour, literally making some of the kids cry because of how sad and traumatic his story is, only to reveal that he was lying straight to our faces. But, we should totally trust him that drugs are bad, even though the only thing we know about this man is a lie.

On the bright side, I came out of that experience as a better critical-thinker, and with a fresh sense of skepticism that I’ve carried with me through life. But I still like drugs, sooo…