Drug education in Japan

I guess they teach drug awareness around the world! This is something I had not considered yet... I wonder if they do Sex ed too? Interesting to consider, if you keep Japanese culture in mind. I bet sex ed is something parents have to do. However, they do teach drug awareness. Or rather, they scare the sh*t out of the children!

Let me tell you about the video we watched on Wednesday.

First scene: Man getting on his bike when all of a sudden he screams, drops his bike and runs off. View moves over to reveal a dead girl on the sidewalk. It shows a close up, like big bleeding cut on her forehead and the blank look in her half-open eyes.

How did she die?

Flash back to one year ago. She is happy at work. She is leaving right on time because she has a date with a guy!
The guy steps out in the middle of dinner, goes down a sketchy alley and buys cigarettes from a sketchy looking dude in a dark coat.

The evening moves on to find the two at the girl's apartment. The guy pulls out his cigarettes and then pulls out a little bag of drugs. (I am actually not sure what drug it was, but they put it on foil, held a lighter below the foil and then inhaled it through a pipe thing... it probably said what drug it was but the video was in Japanese, imagine that, so I did not understand) ANYway, it shows the girl saying "please stop, please stop, dont do that here" (very weakly, i might add) and then it shows her succumbing to peer pressure and finally inhaling the drug for herself. She coughs a lot and clearly did not enjoy it. BUT then as it takes effect, she smiles.

She begins to miss work and over time moves on to heavier drugs. We watched as she injected herself. We saw the shivers when she needed a fix. She did not look good after a while, and her arm was really gross when they showed it. It was all purple and icky. (all the students gasped at that)

Last scene: She takes some drugs and starts having hallucinations of bugs crawling all over her and her apartment. She freaks out. Just as she sort of calms down, a delivery man rings the doorbell, causing her to panic and jump out the window.

And we have now come full circle to see her lying dead on the ground after having jumped out of her apartment.

It was a pretty intense video, considering these kids are like 12-14 years old. I do not remember ever seeing anything serious in school when we did the ATOD stuff. I think they were always hokey 80s videos that, while they didnt make drugs look cool, they didnt really make them look all that bad either. Just showed people being stupid and some coughing. Never any of the really serious effects of drug use.

I have always thought if they could show things a little more intense in the US, a few more kids might get the message but who knows.

Just another random blog post to show another small cultural difference between the US and Japan.