Healthy Harold The Giraffe Will Start Teaching Kids About The Dangers Of Ice

Remember Healthy Harold? He used to show up to your primary school with his mates in the Life Education van and teach you about things like healthy eating and always remembering to wash your hands. Harold made learning fun – or at the very least, got you out of actual class for a couple of hours. Also he was a giraffe. And giraffes are awesome.

But you know what’s not awesome? Methamphetamines. According to a recent study by the Medical Journal of Australia, there are more than a quarter of a million regular and dependent methamphetamine users in this country, almost triple the amount that there were five years ago.

It’s for this reason that Life Education has decided to update Harold’s list of talking points to include the effects and dangers of illicit drugs, including crystal methamphetamine, more commonly known as ice.

The decision to include material on illicit drug use was made after Life Education received feedback from schools. “We want to make sure that students really understand the facts so they can make informed decisions,” Life Education spokesperson Robyn Richardson told The Age. “It will be age appropriate and teach them about safe decision-making in the context of drugs.”

To be clear, while this may all sound pretty fucking depressing, this is actually a good thing. Obviously the fact that Australia’s ice habit has gotten so bad is somewhat less than ideal, but at least now schools will have a tried and tested resource to help educate their students. He may just be a puppet, but Harold legitimately scared me off touching cigarettes for more than a decade. Hopefully he can do the same thing with a drug that can make it feel like you’ve got bugs crawling under your skin.

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Feature image via Healthy Harold.