Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ roll

“Chaperones don’t enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet”

- Miss Manners (Judith Martin)

The news lit up a few days ago with mess of irate articles about a Los Angeles County Public Health Department poster that (depending on who you listen to) either teaches you “how to take ecstasy“, “condones its use” or “promotes its safe use“. Being the kind of folks that we are, we’ll just post it here and let you decide for yourself (click the image to enlarge). After a massive backlash, the posters have been recalled and will probably come out in a much more “drugs are bad” format soon.

It’s a fair question, though: Does educating people around how to use a drug safely also encourage people to actually use it? I’d say it’s in our best interests to answer that… after all, not 3 months ago, we had a post devoted to how to party safely if you’re going to drink or do drugs. =D

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Well, how about this: Does educating people around how to use their genitals safely also encourage people to have sex? Does condom distribution actually lead to people having more sex?

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I’ve been meaning to talk about this story for a long time too: Last month, a school in New Hampshire banned the distribution of a safe-sex kit after parental reaction to the fact that it contained candy and (more importantly) flavoured lubricant. I’m guessing the idea here is that providing flavoured lube crosses the line of encouraging minors to sexual activity.

A representative from the agency that distributed the kits said it was included because the use of lube can reduce the chance of the condom breaking… dry condoms can rip or tear under friction. For the sake of shit-disturbing, I’d go a step further and say that flavoured lube reminds people that safer sex is a good idea for oral too… plus regular condoms are lubricated with spermicide, which usually tastes horrible. A lot of places that hand out condoms will also give out unlubricated condoms for precisely that reason, btw.

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For both the ecstasy poster and the safe-sex kits, the outrage seemed to be based on the same idea: That teaching teenagers how to do something safely or “correctly” will just be encouraging them to do it because you’re telling them that “it’s okay to do it”… and that the responsible thing to do is to tell them clearly that it is not.

But see, the whole idea of harm reduction isn’t that “it’s okay to do it”… I think it’s pretty clear the “harm” part of it implies that there are some harmful consequences regardless. Quite the opposite, I think it says, “I’m not here to judge whether what you’re doing is good or bad… you may decide to take drugs, you may decide to remain a virgin until your wedding night. In the end, I just want to make sure that if it does happen, you get through it in one piece and with no bad taste in your mouth.”

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Happy Birthday, YouthInBC.com! We turned 7 years old on Thursday, and I think we’re lookin’ pretty good for our age!