They recognize the complexities of drug use and addiction that their health class lessons and programs such as D.A.R.E. don’t acknowledge.
They understand that staying away from drugs is more complicated than just saying no, as a generation of kids was instructed to do.
They recognize that young people who use drugs often do so to cope with pain in their lives.
That’s why the suggestions many students have for what their schools could do to more effectively keep them and their peers from becoming addicted to drugs don’t fit neatly into a particular curriculum, lesson plan or school-wide assembly.
More than 160 students and school personnel shared their thoughts and ideas on preventing addiction Tuesday during a daylong event at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor sponsored by the BDN, the U.S. attorney’s office for Maine, the Maine attorney general’s office and the Maine Principals’ Association. The purpose of the event, the One Life Project — Youth Voice, was to engage young people in conversation and problem-solving and for the adults to listen.
The overall message from the event and our takeaway? We could all benefit from listening a lot more to students about the challenges in their lives. They are the experts in what they’re experiencing. They are the experts in what drives them and their peers to drink, use drugs and start down the path of addiction.
A school assembly designed to scare kids away from drinking on prom night and getting behind the wheel, students acknowledge, might have shock value that night and some impact, but the message from a one-off event won’t be long-lasting, students agreed.
According to the students who attended the One Life Project — Youth Voice event, such one-off events and anti-drug initiatives don’t compare to the presence of a supportive person in a young person’s life — whether that person is a peer, a teacher, a parent, a counselor, a school principal or a bus driver.
“Give advice without judging,” one student wrote in notes summarizing the discussions that took place at the Tuesday event. “Put yourself in their shoes and be compassionate. Listen without cutting them off.”
“If you lend a listening ear and just let the person let everything out,” another student wrote, “it will make the person feel so much better and relieved.”
There’s research that backs up the students on this point. While most anti-drug initiatives in schools in recent decades have focused on educating students directly about the perils of drug use and strategies for rejecting drugs when offered, “it turns out that approaches involving social interaction work better than the ones emphasizing education,” the Scientific American reported in 2014.
The logic follows that the primary request from students Tuesday wasn’t for another program or class to drive home the message about the risks of drug use. Rather, it was that adults listen to them — not necessarily to offer advice, but to listen. Students want the adults who are in their lives to really be there for them. And students want to be active participants in the conversations going on in their communities about drug use and addiction.
If more adults started to listen, they might realize that the young people in their communities might have a lot to share that could prove useful in keeping what has become Maine’s most significant public health challenge from spiraling even more out of control.
