Community Corner

Drug Education Expert: Community Coalitions Vital to Winning War on Drugs

Monte Stiles, with 28 years of experience as a state and federal prosecutor, told leaders during Thursday's Community Summit there is no precedence for how to protect youth against drug abuse in light of the voter-passed I-502 last fall.

Monte Stiles, a well-respected drug educator and former prosecutor who specialized in drug cases for 24 of his 28-year professional career, freely admits that doing drug education in the state of Washington in light of the passage of I-502 last fall is "weird."

More than just weird, there's nothing to compare it to, including policies and methods in foreign countries where Americans perceive that there are more liberal ideologies regarding drug use, he said.

"We do not know how to do drug education under these new laws," he told a group of community leaders during a pre-summit event Thursday afternoon before the 20th Annual Sumner/Bonney Lake Area Community Summit got underway.

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Educators are just figuring things out, and it's why active and engaged community coalitions are so critical in protecting the most vulnerable from the fall out of drug use and drug abuse, he said.

A Little History

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Stiles walked the audience through a brief timeline of popular drug use in American culture, pointing to the culture of the 60s and 70s as a time of experimentation before communities tightened regulations in the 80s and with national education campaigns like 'Just Say No,' drug use fell noticeably.

The trend reversed since then, and currently, Stiles stated bluntly, "we are losing the war on drug education. ... We're losing an entire generation of people." 

A significant reason is that there are no longer the resources to proactively educate children and community members at large about the dangers of drug use and to steer them toward drug-free lifestyles. One Red Ribbon talk a year does not constitute drug education, he said.

Forming a Coalition, Doing the Work

By a community coalition, Stiles explained it needs to include all members of a community including schools, law enforcement, media, religious organizations, civic and volunteer groups and most importantly, the youths along with their parents.

Drug education needs to be something the community comes to own, he said, and it's up to the coalition to get that message across to people:

  • They need to create a sense of urgency that change is necessary.
  • They need to break through barriers of apathy, denial, fear and pessimism. Tell them about the victims of drug use, which will always include children. Tell them about the cost to a society to put a drug addict through the legal system, which is paid for by taxpayers.
  • They need to educate the community with facts that stem from skewed political campaigns. Casual marijuana users are not sent to jail, he said, and neither are small-time sellers. A suspect would have to be trafficking large quantities of marijuana to warrant extended jail time. In most cases, a suspect may sit in jail overnight and receive a fine and citation.
  • They need to give people reasons to care. “It’s hard to get people there,” Stiles said of community drug education events in general. He advocates thinking of where there is a captive audience: schools, churches, businesses, conferences and places where people are already gathered. Show them the consequences of illegal drug manufacturing, trafficking and use on the environment, on health, on domestic violence cases and mental illness.
  • They need to show them how they can get involved in bringing the coalition's vision of a drug-free community to fruition.

Marijuana use in popular culture is an additional hindrance to the message of drug education, Stiles said, and he traces the support of marijuana legalization to big business -- similar to the state of the tobacco industry a few decades ago.

Then again, look where tobacco use is now, he said, thanks in large part to educating people on the dangers of smoking and second-hand smothing. "It works when we do it right," he said. "It's why we do drug education."

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