YMMV / Lucy Stone Mysteries

• Values Resonance: Christmas Cookie Murder delves into the Drugs Are Bad trope, but focuses more on discussing how supposedly "zero tolerance" anti-drug initiatives don't actually accomplish much. When Lucy finds out Toby and one of his friends are using marijuana, she's upset but treats this as them being irresponsible teenagers rather than a life-threatening substance addiction. Meanwhile, the new police chief is using every opportunity available to enforce his policies when it's shown he's not actually accomplishing anything. He ruins the department's annual toy drive by forgoing donations to give kids anti-drug coloring books and coerces a teenage boy to act in an ill-executed sting operation to catch store owners selling beer to minors (which totally fails). Lucy sees firsthand the fallacy of zero tolerance when Elizabeth gets suspended for giving a classmate "a controlled substance," as in letting the girl use her inhaler when she was having a bad asthma attack and their teacher did nothing to help. All this before the chief's found out as a total hypocrite who was part of the drug smuggling going on in Tinker's Cove. This has become far more relevant as a result of criticisms being made of the zero-tolerance drug policies that have been enacted since the Reagan administration, ones which focus more on scaring people into not doing drugs and punishing any supposed usage as harshly as possible instead of actually helping people.