So, I knew a guy who smoked a joint this one time, and it gave him an erection that lasted, like, 26 hours, and then his penis exploded, and then he died. I also knew this girl who ate a pot cookie, and it made her pregnant, and then she tried to eat a wheelbarrow full of puppies, and then she died.
Oh, hello! I didn’t see you there. Sorry, I’ve been busy crafting utterly false stories about young people who used cannabis and then died. It’s all the rage over on the D.A.R.E. website.
You remember D.A.R.E, right? The acronym for Drugs Are Really Expensive? Wait, I’ve just been told that it’s really Drug Abuse Resistance Education. If you’re of a certain age, you may recall regular visits by Officer Friendly to your school to share the trash that D.A.R.E. put forward as facts—for example, that cannabis is a gateway drug.
Last week, D.A.R.E. made news when they ran a piece on their website that was taken from a site that specializes in satirical news—meaning fake news. Without fact checking (or applying a modicum of common sense), the brain trust at D.A.R.E. published the story, which reported that nine people in Denver and 12 at Coachella had fatally overdosed on marijuana gummies.
