Not purposely, but if the conversation comes up?
Yesterday a Whitney Houston song came on the radio as we were driving. Ds1 was asking who sung the song, then does she make lots of music, is she from this Country - typical questions from a seven year old. So I said well sadly she's died now. Next question 'How did she die?'. My answer was she took drugs.
Which opened up a huuuge can of worms and invited lots of questions from both ds's. Including: What are drugs? Why are they bad? Where do you get them from? Why do people take them? What do they look like? Is it tablets? - you get the picture. I don't think the conversation has ever come up before.
So I answered their questions. A quick summary of what I told them in response to their questions was that 'bad' or illegal drugs can't be bought in shops and criminals and bad people sell them. That sometimes people take them because of peer pressure (which opened up a whole side conversation about what peer pressure was) or because they're just very, very silly. That no illegal drugs are safe because they don't come with leaflets like the painkillers and things you can get from a shop so you don't know how much to take or what's in them, which is why people die.
We touched on addiction briefly, that sometimes once you take drugs once, even if you don't like how it felt, your body becomes addicted so you have to keep taking them (I think this bit went straight over their heads).
Then, the 'controversial' bit (which DH feels I was bu to tell them) - about how you take drugs. I didn't volunteer this information but they kept questioning and questioning, so have gone away with the knowledge that there are lots of different bad drugs. And that some people smoke them like cigarettes, some people take tablets or put powder up their noses and some people use injections.
Dh feels that I should have skirted their questions more and there's no need for them to know this much at this age...especially for ds2 who is only 5.
I think the information was age appropriate and, whilst not a conversation I would have chosen to introduce quite yet, has done them no harm at all. They've both resolutely declared that they'll never be so stupid as to take bad drugs and are fairly horrified at the thought that some people would actually choose to have an injection voluntarily...which isn't a bad starting attitude really IMO.
WIBU?