A new method of drug education is needed as the just-say-no message has fallen on deaf ears.
“The evidence is clear that when you tell people just don’t use, just don’t drink that it’s useless information for the majority of youth,” said the city’s drug strategy coordinator Patty Hajdu.
The Thunder Bay Drug Strategy hosted its first youth drug policy reform conference Friday at the Lakehead Labour Centre. The conference aimed to examine how society manages drugs and helps people who use drugs to use them in a safer way.
“We know youth are using substances and this conference is really about arming them with the tools they need if they are choosing to use substances to stay as healthy and safe as possible,” Hajdu said, adding they also hope to show youth how to find the resources they need to seek help in the community.
Hajdu hoped the youth would walk away at the end of the day with knowledge not just about the resources available in their community, but also about the laws that affect their lives.
Keynote speaker and retired judge Marvin Morton spoke to the crowd about the federal government’s recently introduced omnibus crime bill and how harsher sentences for minor drug offenders isn’t the answer.
“You could fill the jails with that kind of sentencing process,” said Morton, also a spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a non-profit educational organization that believes current drug policies, including the War on Drugs, is failing.
As a citizen and a lawyer, Morton doesn’t want to see Canadian prisons overloaded with people convicted with minor drug offences.
“You want to prevent and rehabilitate. You don’t want to punish and be harmful to them,” he said. “They’re people. We’ve long addressed this issue in a rather incorrect and superficial manner.”
“The reality is people are committing suicide. People are overdosing,” said Morton. “You’re losing young lives and you’re losing a lot of brain power.”
For Morton, drug use is an issue close to his heart. He said there aren’t many families drug addiction hasn’t touched, either destroying a life or setting one off the rails for a long period of time.
He also stressed the importance of young people knowing their rights.
“How many kingpins in drug trafficking do you think have been arrested and prosecuted and put in jail for 25 years? Can you name one? You can’t,” he said. “That’s why young people have to realize you are the ones that go to jail, not the members of drug cartels or the big business people.”
Hajdu echoed the importance of young people knowing the rules and having a voice. They need to advocate for themselves and work towards laws that reflect what they believe to be true.
“Getting them to understand the policies that affect them and how a particular government can legislate harmful policy for its citizens is really important,” she said.
