Daniel Rodriguez said there’s no such thing as a healthy discussion about legalizing drugs because young people take their cues from adult conversation.

“There are things I believe should not be open for discussion, and this is one of them,” he said. [El Paso Newspaper Tree]

Thank goodness we now have more excuses to stifle discussion on a subject. It’s not even laws that might send messages to children (kids read statutes), but even discussion of them (kids watch C-Span).

El Paso (right across the border from this catastrophe) has been the center of the drug prohibition debate when their city council unanimously voted to add a few words to a resolution asking for, among other things, an “honest open national debate on ending the prohibition on narcotics.” But a request for debate in a city publication was evidently too radical, as state representatives swooped down to threaten the city’s future for federal funding.

Our real Message to Children about drugs?

Being an adult means drinking alcohol.

Youth exposure to alcohol advertising on television has risen by 38% since the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth began monitoring this exposure in 2001. From 2001 to 2007, the number of alcohol advertisements seen in a year by the average television-watching 12-to-20-year-old increased from 216 to 301. In 2007, approximately one out of every five alcohol advertisements was placed on programming that youth ages 12 to 20 were more likely per capita to see than adults of the legal drinking age. Almost all of these placements were on cable television, where distilled spirits companies in particular have dramatically increased their alcohol advertising in the past seven years.

Did you know alcohol advertising is one of those “self-regulated” industries? It was news to me. No bother, I’m sure with alcohol companies regulating what messages are sent to kids, we’re well on our way to a drug-free culture.