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New
Australian
Harm
Reduction-Based
Drug-Ed
Program
Sends
Kids
to
Teach
Kids
1/15/98
In Australia, an innovative program has been unveiled which will train
young people (16-22 yrs.) and pay them to attend concerts and other cultural
events to disseminate infor- mation about drugs and alcohol. Australian
Health Minister Robert Knowles told The Australian News Network, "If
they've got people their own age, normal young kids who have been specially
recruited and trained to provide information, they are much more likely
to be receptive (to it)."
The youths will be paid, by the Centre for Adolescent Health and the
Australian Drug Foundation, and have been trained to discuss both the risks
associated with the use of alcohol and illegal drugs, but also to discuss
ways in which to use the substances more safely. This approach, a linchpin
of the harm reduction philosophy, is based on the idea that while it would
be optimum to keep young people from using these substances at all, some
young people will use them regardless. For them, the philosophy goes, it
is far better to try to keep them from making a tragic mistake due to lack
of information than to leave them to the vagaries of chance simply because
they are engaging in behavior which society wishes they wouldn't.
-- END --
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Issue #25, 1/15/98
Vasconcellos Calls for Medical Marijuana Access in Face of Federal Action Against Clubs | Defense Fund Established for Buyers' Club Defendants | Washington State Bill Authorizing Medical Marijuana to be Considered: Your responses needed! | Pentagon Proposes Ending Military Border Patrols | President Clinton Signs Directive: Authorizes $200 Million to try to Reduce Drugs Use... in Prisons | EU Parliament Delays Vote on Drug Commission Report | Colombian Foreign Minister: "If US Doesn't Certify Us, There Will be a Political Earthquake" | British Medical Journal, Lancet, Calls on US to Act on Needle Exchange | New Australian Harm Reduction-Based Drug-Ed Program Sends Kids to Teach Kids | Nuclear Cruiser USS California Deployed in Drug War | Harm Reduction Workshop in Boston
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