Erowid Psychoactive Vaults : Prohibitionist Sites Reviewed

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PROHIBITION LINKS

Australian Drug Foundation
An index of neutrally worded, plain information pages on various drug types. Good.

Center for Information on Drugs and Alcohol : Drug Index Fact Sheets
A collection of well worded, accurate, and very neutral data sheets on a variety of drugs. Frames discussion in terms of information and harm reduction. Very Good.

CNOA (California Narcotic Officers Association)
This section of the CNOA site contains a couple of position papers, one on why Marijuana is Not Medicine and another about why Drug Legalization is wrong. Standard administrative anti-freedom, anti-choice, pro-government-knows-best, drug-users are bad people, drug legalization groups are completely evil, etc etc.

Completely discounts and disregards all statistics that suggest the Drug War isnt working and suggests that more enforcement (surprise!) is the right way to further help our society. Nightmarishly one sided.

CESAR: Center for Drug Abuse Research
CESAR's drug information is skimpy and way too general. Definitely not a particularly useful or comprehensive source for substance information. However, their list of related links is interesting and useful.

DARE

The DARE site seems to be entirely self-promotional. What little actual information there is is almost impossible to find. Everything is skewed to promote "DARE". The site doesn't really mention the controversy over DARE's effectiveness. Entirely one sided.

DEA

The DEA site does a reasonable job of trying to present the basic facts about drugs. There are a few examples of scare tactics, the information is somewhat negatively framed, and occasionally they let a bit of moralistic attitude slip in, but otherwise this is a reasonable site.

Drug World
This site was created by the UK and funded by the European Commission. It has both a 'zine' and an area with information about a handful of street drugs. The information they present seems reasonably accurate, but is so sparse as to be largely uninteresting. A reasonable site for the quick read basics on recreational drug use in the U.K.

Drugs Info File, by Dr. Miriam Stoppard
This British site looks at drug information from a reasonable viewpoint, that if people are going to choose to use psychoactive drugs, they should be educated about those substances in order to reduce the possible risks. Unfortunately, their drug information has some factual errors, although they have improved in the last couple years. There are some interesting articles and snippets on this site. They deserve a B+ for effort, but a C+ for accuracy.

Freevibe [Full Review]
Sponsored by ABC, the Freevibe site is nicely layed out but horrendously one-sided in its presentation of information. They use some of the worst scare tactics and exaggeration that we've seen.

Health.org
Overall, the health.org site offers nothing but unabated negative information and information framed so that it will be misunderstood by the uninformed reader. It seems to intentionally try to make each substance sound considerably more dangerous than scientific studies have shown them to be. Drugs can be dangerous, but so can misinformation.

Some interesting articles here, but most of it is primarily interesting as a look into prohibitionist culture / public policy. Run by NCADI (a subgroup of SAMHSA).

MDMA

Entirely negative, dismissive of positive claims. Highlights MDMA's bodyload-side effects such as 'sleep problems', 'jaw tension', etc. Uses Scare tactics such as "known to be the cause of at least 2 deaths." without mentioning that over the counter pain medication kills hundreds each year in the US.
Interestingly they claim to know the outcome of research not yet started at NIDA, stating that "It is believed that this research will indicate that MDMA causes brain damage". Suggests MDMA causes severe brain damage. Includes information on DEA's scheduling of MDMA, reference to the "Designer Drug" defintion. Provides no references.

Cannabis
List of documents about marijuana. Lots of information, mostly focusing on advertising-campaign style attempts to convince teen agers not to try it. Very moralistic. Also includes some data (NIH workshop and NIDA capsule are good links).

Reality Check
A campaign to stop the use of marijuana among teens. One sided, wholly negative view of marijuana, with some information for parents about how to note and reduce their child's stress level.

Life Education Network

This is yet another "Anti-Drug" index of drugs with selective listing of only negative effects. A laughable site written by people who have no idea what they are talking about. One example, they misunderstand "anorexia" as a description of one of MDMA's effects. "Anorexia" is a word used in some of the research on MDMA, it is a technical term meaning strong appetite suppression during the peak effects of the drug and does not refer to long term eating disorders. This is a common misunderstanding by people who have no expertise in the field. We are not aware of a single anecdote or any research evidence to suggest that MDMA has ever caused long term anorexia in anyone. If we are wrong, please let us know.

Provides sketchy and alarmist information about various categories of drugs. Includes "Death" as a long term effect for most of the categories. Repeats fatuous rumors and myths in an attempt to scare off users.

War on Drugs
A collection of scanned tables and maps, some of them interesting, but all (of course) extremely prohibitionist. The figures are given without comment and and are obviously intended to show how terrible the drug-scourge is. They fail to point out that alcohol and cigarettes are included in most of the figures in the tables.

National Families in Action

The NFIA site offers entirely negatively framed information. It exaggerates the negative effects of most drugs and diminishes any positive uses, but otherwise is mostly accurate. This is a fairly non-moralistic site. Provides few references.

Cannabis
No moralizing. Discusses only negative effects. May confuse uninformed readers by listing side effects which only occur from being stoned all waking hours. No blatantly false information.

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

NIDA is one of the largest US government organizations devoted to backing Prohibition with "science". Unfortunately their 'results' are highly political and moral and their 'science' is not to be trusted. The good information is surrounded by scare tatics and entirely negatively framed info. They entirely refute any claims of even commonly accepted benefits from drugs. Provides access to many NIDA studies.

Parnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA)

The PDFA site is surprisingly good. Only slightly negatively framed. Drug info copied primarily from DEA & NIDA. Contains some good information, though few sources and is decidedly non-judgemental. They are willing to acknowledge the positive effects and the long history of the use of drugs. Much identical text to the NIDA site...sections well chosen to avoid the worst of NIDA.

Project Know
Project kNOw is another failed prohibitionist media concept that is now a link to freevibe.com and theantidrug.com.

Singapore Central Narcotics Bureau
A collection of anti-drug videos in English. High bandwidth required.

StreetDrugs.org (formerly Publisher Group) : Drugs of Abuse [Full Review]

Information about a wider range of psychedelics than most of the other prohibitions sites. Their information is generally accurate though they occasionally succumb to spreading unsupported rumors.

Teen Challenge

This site covers a moderate number of drugs. The information is interesting and quite accurate. They avoid most moral arguements and are quite fair in their portrayals of the effects and hazards of most drugs. Quite nice.

Their front page has java, flash, sound, and crashes both MSIE & Netscape with regularity.

Trashed.uk

They've improved their site layout somewhat, interface still confusing.

There is little information about the group that created the site. Supposedly they are sponsored by the British government, but there is little evidence of it on the site. The site feels flat and small. There is some information from the day the site was launched, but it is extremely badly formatted and a nice purple on dark blue. The FAQ on the site is a list of frequently asked questions with no answer. They suggest you call and talk to them.

In general, the information presented is run of the mill anti-drug political-moral presented as neutral-factual. Their intention is clearly to reduce the damage done to kids and communities through the unhealthy use of recreational psychoactives. But they fall into the same old trap of intentionally not mentioning any positive effects, exaggerating the negative, and being willing to state half-truths to make their point. They don't mention alcohol or tobacco anywhere on the site.

Last Modified - Tue, May 17, 2005

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