rachel

At the risk of taking something seriously that was not mean to be taken as such....

First, I will assume that by 'burner', you mean 'person who attends burning man'.

As a legit eagle scout, I have some amount of perspective here. I certainly interacted with a number of people at that time who would likely attend burning man as an adult. All kinds of people are involved in scouting. I'm not sure I see any strong causality though. The factors I can think of are:

• If you're in a good scouting group, you'll probably learn how that living in a tent for a few days is fun, and not all that difficult. This could decrease one of the psychological barriers to going to burning man.

• Since it's a youth organization, there many be some selection bias at hand. Those families that enroll their children in a scouting group may have already taught their children things about outdoor recreation. Which in turn, would reduce the barriers for going to burning man.

Despite the explicit agenda of the boy scouts in particular, I'm not sure there's any real correlation between scouting enrollment and substance use, or the lack thereof.

But this should come with a huge caveat: I'm perhaps one of the squarest people you'll ever meet, and know little of burning man other than what I've read.

Final caveat: though I was in the boy scouts as a kid, I now have pretty significant issues with the way the go do things. My own kids are in Outdoor Service Guides, a scouting group that is significantly More Chill.