After a four-year delay, Racing Against Drugs has pulled into Thunder Bay for another visit.
The three-day drug and alcohol awareness event, which started on Tuesday, had students in Grades 5 and 6 from a number of different schools participate in variety of activities. Organizers spread out 10 stations across the Fort William First Nation Community Centre.
Some of the activities included playing a racing video game, answering questions Jeopardy-style and wearing goggles to simulate intoxication.
Carly Geddes, a Grade 5 student at Westmount Public School, said she was having fun while learning an important message.
“We learned that there’s needles and they are very dangerous,” Carly said. “It’s good for young kids to learn about drugs so when they are older they won’t get into it. They will know what will happen to them and what the effects are.”
RCMP Cpl. and event organizer Cheryle Hayden said she didn’t know why they had such a gap between visits but was glad to be back.
She added that they use the sport of auto racing to try to capture the attention of the students and send the message to stay away from drugs.
“Research has shown that (Grades 5 and 6) are a good age group to target for getting the information out to them,” Hayden said. “By (giving the message) interactively at booths like this, it has shown that they will retain it. We were here four years ago at this same location and it was wonderful. We had this four years ago and since that time, because this is such a highly, hugely requested event, we’ve been trying to get it back.”
Hayden said they received a lot of good feedback from participants who wanted to do the activity again.
Fort William First Nation Chief Peter Collins said he wasn’t sure why they was a delay but was glad they made a return visit. He said the tough thing about putting on events such as this one is keeping the momentum going.
“For us in Fort William here there’s a lot of us that are impacted by opiates and we’re trying to find solutions and find answers on how we can deal with it,” Collins said. “We need healthy people on these job projects and on the sites in a healthy way.”
