In my view, davedes has a valid and important point.
Young people are going to experiment with all aspects of life from sex and relationships to substance use, be it tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. The current way of teaching sex education in some schools and drug use in all schools is that the students quickly learn that the school (and by extension the government and most other institutions including the churches) are the last place one would go for information. Information you will not get, propaganda and lies you will.
At a fairly tender age, young people will begin exploring their worlds. If we as parents, educators, spiritual leads, and public officials lie to them about the world they'll be investigating, we insure that their path will be more dangerous. However, if we explain how to tread that path safely, and assure them that home, school, church will always be 'safe harbors' and honest harbors for them, the odds that they will experiment and learn improve, that they will experiment and come to harm will not.
If I'm recalling the research correctly,
research shows that abstinence-only programs don't work. The same can be said for
many drug abuse programs.
If parents, schools, churches, and public officials are honest with young people--even if they don't like the information they have to disseminate-- for the most part young people will make the right choices, and when they experiment the chances of them coming to harm will be greatly reduced.
Moreover, through honesty, young people's respect is earned. Most of us , particularly young people, try to earn the respect of those we respect in turn, not of those who we know lie to us.