Who Makes The Better Spokesman?

This is a thought I had a few years back, long, long before I had ever started blogging, so now seems like a good time to put it down on electronic paper. The thought was simply this:

If you wanted a spokesman to talk to some group about the evils of drugs, is it better to bring in someone come in who's gone down that path himself/herself and then put their life back together later, or someone who never made those mistakes in the first place? Common wisdom seems to be the former, since that's often what you get: some 40+ or 50+ ex-druggie, maybe even an aging sports, movie or music star, who's now telling kids, "Don't do what I did when I was your age or you'll regret it!"

But to me that always sounds like a cop-out. From my perspective, this jerk's coming in and saying, "Yeah, I did all that wild stuff when I was a kid but you shouldn't! You should be smarter than that, or care less about being popular than I did, or be able to resist temptation better than I did. And don't read any of the stuff I said back when I was high, about how great it was and how I just went to party after party all week long, cuz that was just the drugs talking!"

Shouldn't it make more of an impression if someone instead said, "I know exactly what you're going through because it's what I went through, too. Peer pressure, and thinking getting high'll make you look cool or take all your problems away. But you can avoid all the crap that comes with it, just like I did, by walking away, and here's how..."

I know if I were looking for someone to learn from, I wouldn't listen to anyone who did it all wrong, made all of the mistakes because they were easy, and then at some point wised up - in many cases simply because they reached a low point where even they couldn't deny the damage it was doing anymore. I'd be wanting to hear from the person who did it right from the start, in the face of all the obstacles. But maybe that's just my unique perspective.