No parent wants their child in trouble with drugs including alcohol. But, conventional approaches to drug education and prevention are limited by a fatalistic view that paints all drug use as abuse and all drug users as bad. Unfortunately, Broad brush simplicity doesn’t help to engender the deeper understanding needed to address the complexities of problematic drug use among young people. Most egregiously, it stigmatizes children who do try drugs with a powerful, shame-based mark of disgrace and reproach that teaches them to lie to us and hide from their teachers.