I can only hope that the schools come out with an honest and forthright education program. Programs like DARE are a complete waste since they are filled with so many lies.
Pure heroin or cleanly mixed down heroin for most people is not extremely addictive. The addiction is generally due to childhood trauma issues or potential genetic predisposition towards addiction. If you have been sexually abused or have had other types of trauma in your young life or have relatives who cannot control their drinking – stay away from heroin and other opioid substances.
Overdoses typically come from poor mixing of additives such as fentanyl or other opioids into “heroin” making a potential lethal concoction or it could be fairly mild which can lead to a person increasing their dosage.
Youth will experiment with alcohol, marijuana, LSD, mushrooms and a number of other drugs. Many of these drugs are not addictive. Alcohol is a legal but problematic substance. LSD and mushrooms if taken should be done with a person that has experience taking them, same for a number of other drugs. Respect each other, refrain from sexual activity as inhibitions may become lowered while under the influence or persons can become totally unaware of what they may be encouraged to do. If you mutually consent to having sex, skip the alcohol and drugs.
If you are having pain issues, be very cautious of opioids that a doctor may prescribe. Try non-drug therapies first. Remember, these opioids were developed by the drug companies as a pain killer to replace heroin. What they developed is a drug that is stronger, is more addictive and has a much greater risk of fatality when sourced from the black market.
These are my opinions based on a lifetime of experience. I do not purport to be an expert on these issues but have been a user of a number of the noted substances among others. At 15, I and several friends vowed not to inject drugs in response to one other friend who was then a weekend heroin user but we were game for any other drugs, and yes we all had been impacted by childhood trauma. I do not support youth using drugs or alcohol but realize that they will experiment. I do however support being honest and truthful with our youth about the potential risks. Our laws unfortunately do not match with the reality of intoxicating substances.