To not understand why harm reduction regarding drugs isn't taught in secondary school?

[janef001]

I live in Ireland and I was listening to a radio show about the government planning on decriminalizing drug use. A caller brought up a point that it's no good decriminalizing if education about drugs isn't also taught in school as well.

My teenage nephew goes to high school in the U.S. and apparently gets several class on the different classes of drugs and their effects. Now, granted he does go to a private school but I never had any of that when I was younger. Why is this not common?

I'm in Ireland and at the secondary school I attended they never stopped warning us about the dangers of drugs!! This was years ago, a convent school.
(As an aside, it was a single sex school. Occasionally we had discos with boys from a neighbouring school and the nuns would patrol to make sure nothing happened! A girl sitting on a boy's knee was a complete no-no for example. We all thought they were so over the top then, but now, reading threads on here about the sexual harassment girls can endure at school, I am grateful to those nuns. They took care of us when we didn't yet know how to mind ourselves.)

"Drug awareness" and nearly everything alluded to on this thread isn't harm reduction though, which is what OP refers to.

Most drug education will be along the "just say no"/scare kids to death route.It's not evidence based and research tells us it's a really poor way to engage with kids on this subject. Harm reduction approaches acknowledge that whilst not desirable, taking drugs is a really common thing for kids to do, and giving them the information they need to be as safe as possible is the responsible thing to do.

Absolutely horrified me that in this day and age we have police delivering education to kids on what is first and foremost, a health issue. They don't have the appropriate knowledge or positionality to give teenagers what they need to know on this subject