1990s DARE. Gateway Drug to Modern Fascism? [View all]

JH Hannah (prodigitason)
Oct. 3rd 2025
Deep East Texas

When I was a high school senior in 1986, D.A.R.E. told me marijuana was a “gateway drug.” Supposedly the high stops being “enough,” and from there you’ll slide toward cocaine, heroin, or worse.

Even then, the logic felt thin. If marijuana ever led to something harder, the culprit wasn’t cannabis itself but prohibition. You went to your guy for weed; if he was out, he might offer pills or powder instead. That’s the black market, not a escalating addiction dynamic. You wanted cannabis, but prohibition got you something else.

D.A.R.E. wasn’t built around harm reduction. It was built to tell a morality tale. And it’s a tale that, even at this late date, still lives in the hearts of a few dead-enders — like Texas’s lieutenant governor, clinging to reefer-madness rhetoric while most of the country has moved on.

The Gateways We Actually Walk Through

Most people’s first altered state isn’t cannabis at all. It’s spinning around in the yard as a toddler until you collapse dizzy. Later, it’s sneaking cigarettes or drinking cheap beer in high school. By any honest definition, alcohol is the real gateway drug: it’s usually tried first, it’s socially celebrated, and it carries the heaviest toll.

Marijuana use, on the other hand, usually has a natural stop. You smoke until you’re high and then you quit. As the comedian Gallagher once joked: “If you’re high and you keep smoking pot, you don’t get more high—you just get less weed.” Alcohol and plenty of other drugs don’t work that way. Keep going and you’re not just wasting your stash—you’re courting a trip to the emergency room, alcohol very much included.

D.A.R.E. warned us about escalating highs: you try something, the next time isn’t as good, so you chase more and more until it controls you. That isn’t how cannabis works for most people. That is precisely how capitalism works for nearly everyone.

The thrill of your first car, your first smartphone, your first pair of expensive shoes, it’s electric. But the second never feels the same. So you buy the next version, then the upgrade, then the add-on. You tell yourself stories, sometimes your loved ones, about why you need it. You sacrifice time, energy, even health for the next fix. The system is built to keep you craving.

The irony is that D.A.R.E. encouraged kids to turn on their families. Suspect your parents? Call the cops. A free society doesn’t ask children to spy on loved ones—it conditions them. And while kids were made junior deputies, police departments were cashing in on civil asset forfeiture, keeping property they seized in drug cases. D.A.R.E. was the PR arm of a war that looked more like a business, a racket. I wonder how many moody loner MAGAs were active on 1990s DARE programs.
They were a perfect gateway drum to 21st Century fascism.