Wesley Crusher on Crack Cocaine
Star Trek portrays young people as naive about drugs, and unaware of its deleterious effects. In "Symbiosis", Wesley goes to Tasha and essentially asks, "Tasha, why do people take drugs?" It seems that the young genius who can reconfigure a tractor beam into a repuslor beam in seconds finds himself stumped on the subject of addictive substances. Wesley's portrayal of an idiot savante is symbolic of the lack of knowlege that young people have about drugs.
In another episode, "The Naked Now", Wesley gets his first fix. He is infected with a virus that causes him to become goofy, carefree, and lacking in good judgment. Wesley execises this poor judgment by locking everyone out of the engine room and disabling the ship's engines at a time when a chunk of a star is about to collide with the Enterprise. Picard tries to reason with young Wes by telling him that the disease is making him act like he is drunk. Upon hearing this, Wesley becomes excited, thinking it's cool to be drunk, typifying young people's attitudes towards drinking, and perhaps drugs as well.
Star Trek is saying two things here. First, that young people are either ignorant of the effects of drugs and alcohol or ignorantly buy into the stereotype that being drunk or stoned is "cool". The second thing that Star Trek is saying is that there should be more drug education programs to help educate youngsters about the dangers of drugs and alchohol, rather than a punative approach, such as jail or other incarceration. At the end of "The Naked Now" Picard doesn't toss Wesley into the brig for his misdeeds; rather, he acts with compassion and understanding. The image of Picard lecturing Wesley about alcohol or Tasha lecturing him about drugs is meant to show that with education young people can avoid the temptation of addictive substances.
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