Reactions to Don't Panic

I am a graduate student at Harvard's school of Education, and I am currently researching the Dutch harm reduction model as a radical approach to reinstating social cohesion. I came upon your site through CEDRO, and was drawn to the "don't panic" page. I wish every parent had a copy of this. I am a long way from having children, but I intend to print and save this wonderful pamphlet. Everyone who went through it knows the "just say no" approach doesn't work, and, in my eyes, shouldn't. Having reached a point of serious frustration with the blindness of the American academic community toward Dutch research in alternative forms of social policy, I was particularly pleased to see the scope of your work actually addresses many of these issues head-on. I wish more American researchers would be willing to look overseas to the excellent research being done at the University of Amsterdam (Cohen et al.) and that there was some way to get funding for more widespread publication than the radical funding sources can get. When will we convince the NIH that the War on Drugs is (as Dan Baum put it in his recent book, Smoke and Mirrors) is "the politics of failure?" Thanks for your work against this socially destructive form of public policy.

J.C.

Dear JC:

Steal this pamphlet! We give you permission to show it to your colleagues in education -- we welcome this. You only have to pay us when you actually introduce it in a school program!

Thanks for your praise.

Best,

Stanton Peele