Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.)

When I was in elementary/middle school we had a police officer and a lion, the mascot for the D.A.R.E. program, come in and talk to us about drugs a few times each year. They told us how expensive, horribly addictive, and deadly all drugs were. We watched "informational" videos on how drugs are distributed and by who, and how to "just say no" to those people. They showed us pictures of what heroine does to the skin and how cocaine can cause septal perforation and cause your nose to collapse.  What we learned was pretty much that if we did drugs we would get addicted and die. This is how many of my peers and I learned about drugs. This is what most of us based our views of drugs on, and it worked for some of us. Others, not so much.
Drugs are a popular focus for many movies and TV shows such as; Weeds, Flight, Pineapple Express, and Requiem for a Dream. Some shows glorify drug addiction while others show, to some extent, how terrible addiction can be. For example, Requiem for a Dream shows us how speed, heroine, and cocaine addiction sucks you in and shrinks you to the smallest form of yourself. It tells an intricate tale of four people and how addiction has the authority to ruin everything you thought you had, relationships, money, dreams, and ambitions. 
For most of us, we think of addicts as the homeless people who stand in the middle of busy streets and near popular intersections with those cardboard signs asking for money, most likely to buy more drugs. This is probably because druggies are viewed as homeless low-lives who cannot keep a job and need to beg for money to keep up with their drug habits.
I, myself, have never done drugs. Honestly, I'm scared that I will die the first time I try them so I stay away from them. The D.A.R.E. people kind of over exaggerated so I think I can thank my parents for that. The efficacy of the program is widely debated but it is still used in some schools today. I don't think it works as well as they would like it to, I know I have many friends who have let the D.A.R.E. lion down.