When Abbotsford firefighter Spencer Clark brought his teenage daughter to work, she was shocked to see him attend five drug overdoses in a single shift.
“It was eye-opening for me to see how eye-opening it was to her,” he said.
B.C.’s overdose crisis, fueled by the deadly synthetic opiate fentanyl, is a daily reality for Clark, but not for his Grade 9 student. Clark, vice-president of the local chapter of the International Association of Fire Fighters, decided his union needed to act to educate kids about the dangers of drugs.Making sure kids ‘kNOw’ drug dangers
He said the stereotype of only long-term entrenched users overdosing does not hold up. Many calls have been to places where people are simply experimenting with different drugs, he said. So, he figured, stopping them before they ever start could save live.
The union developed a slogan and logo with a simple message: “F kNOw.” Reminiscent of Nancy Reagan’s drug war cry “Just say no” of the 1980s, the firefighters hope their new motto will catch the attention of young people online and act as a conduit to accurate information.
Clark said sharing the logo online will lead people to click on a link to an Abbotsford Police webpage with stark warnings about the dangers of fentanyl. “You can’t see it, smell it or taste it, but if your drug of choice is cut with fentanyl, it can kill you,” the page warns. It also warns of the “W-series” opioids such as W-18 that are even more deadly than fentanyl.
The page also has a series of grim posters: a limp hand captioned “One pill can last your lifetime,” a casket captioned “There is no fun in funeral,” a toe-tagged body in a morgue captioned “The high cost of a cheap thrill” and more.Scare tactics don’t work
But do bleak warnings like this actually work to prevent teenagers from experimenting with drugs?
“No, not really,” said Jon Heidt, an associate professor in the University of the Fraser Valley’s criminology department. “Not according to the research.”
Heidt, who studies drug abuse, said scare tactics may seem like they should work to keep kids away, but they simply don’t. Part of the problem is that young people often feel invincible.
“They hear the story or they hear what happens and they think ‘Oh, well I’m young and that’s not going to happen to me, that’s something that happens to people who do this for years and years.”
He said that appealing to morals also doesn’t work. In fact, he said, those tactics stigmatize users and can isolate them from the supports they need.
Other flawed tactics include lectures and punitive “zero tolerance” policies, Heidt said.Effective drug prevention strategies
So what actually works?
Interactive programs that teach kids creative ways to turn down drugs have proven effective, Heidt said. Such programs put kids in realistic scenarios and give them clever excuses to escape peer pressure, rather than “Just say no.” But even these only work well if they are consistently repeated and administered by someone the students respect, Heidt said.
It’s also crucial for educators to be honest about drugs in order, Heidt said, to avoid a “cry wolf” lack of trust among young people.
“[When I was in school] I was told all these crazy things about marijuana use — you go crazy and it can cause guys to grow breasts,” he said. “That’s stuff from the old drug war propaganda. There’s not much truth to any of that kind of thing.”
If students hear inflated warnings about drugs and then see their falsity in the real-world, they won’t trust any warnings, Heidt said.
Another way to keep kids sober is to keep them busy, he said. Sports and other extracurricular activities not only keep young people busy, Heidt said it also helps them build a sense of identity as they grow into adulthood – one that hopefully doesn’t include drug abuse and addiction.
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