While there's lots of talk about the growing divide between the rich and the poor, I wonder if enough attention is paid to the divide between children and adults, especially teens and adults.

Case in point is the current mission of provincial governments to "educate" about and "combat" the threat from methamphetamine -- a.k.a. crystal meth. Special funds are set aside to deliver sundry programs and initiatives "designed" to reach kids.

Kids Tune Out Adults' Messages About Booze And Drugs; But They'll Listen To A Real Life Story From One Of Their Own

While there's lots of talk about the growing divide between the rich and the poor, I wonder if enough attention is paid to the divide between children and adults, especially teens and adults.

Case in point is the current mission of provincial governments to "educate" about and "combat" the threat from methamphetamine -- a.k.a. crystal meth. Special funds are set aside to deliver sundry programs and initiatives "designed" to reach kids.

The problem is that they almost always don't. And that's often because they are driven from an adult perspective.

I've been to countless motivational, anti-drunk driving, and other message assemblies in high schools. If they're entertaining enough they make an impact that lasts until the end of the day.

The glitch is they're organized and done by adults, they're intended to manipulate one way or the other and thus are transparent, and don't resonate in any deep way with the kids. They tend to be another exercise in which the authorities try to get through to the kids what the authorities want. Kids instinctively recognize that and their natural, developmental resistance goes up, even if only on the unconscious level.

Kids need to rebel, they need to establish their own sense of self -- independent from their parents and adults. Kids need to take risks, to let loose. At the same time, they need to belong, to fit in. It's a troublesome combination when a society has become predatory.

Companies routinely target kids as consumers. They design campaigns to get them to buy fashions, products, gadgets, lifestyles. They see it as their right to cultivate tastes and desires to enhance sales now and in the future. So too the illicit drug business. Addiction to drugs is essential to maximum profits.

Of course, kids don't get that. They don't realize that they are being so ruthlessly used and shaped.

So, how do we counter the threat from drugs -- particularly from methamphetamine ( and its prevalence in ecstasy ), which actually does seriously threaten the well-being of our kids? One recent student assembly that I attended, and which did resonate, featured a lone speaker in a wheelchair. He wore his baseball cap backwards, spoke like a teenager, including a bit of swearing, and seemed much younger than his 26 years. His was a message about drinking and driving, yet what was unique about it was that he was all for drinking. He came across as one of them.

So, for over an hour he drew in the audience of 400 by engaging them with his story. It was a story they could all relate to and it was not a lesson. Instead of teaching, he was giving the inside scoop, info he had gleaned while going where they go.

This is precisely the model that will have maximum effect in the quest to influence kids about crystal meth. Instead of relying on catchy titles or slogans, carefully crafted videos, or a preponderance of medical facts, we need to get real kids in front of real kids. Each province should be cultivating and recruiting young people who are recovering methamphetamine addicts to be frontline speakers.

These kids are the ones to tell their stories to the masses of teenagers who are blissfully insulated with their feelings of immortality and no tomorrow. They need to recount how the substance has damaged them, the hallucinations, the depression, the volatility, the pain. They need to tell how that never happened with pot or mushrooms.

Thus, there is no intent to lecture about "drugs" -- let that fall to parents. There is only the intent to tell a real life story. Let the speakers talk the way they normally do, bad language and all.

Nothing influences us more quickly and lastingly than getting first-hand information from someone we trust and relate to. Needing to get the car fixed, we go to a mechanic that someone we know vouches for. Doing some travelling? We choose the hotel, restaurant, travel agent that someone we know has good experience with. Hiking? Don't go along that path, there's a bear up there.

Most of us appreciate and heed such inside information. Kids need inside information. But from those who have been there, not outside information from someone in a uniform, someone in a suit, or someone who is not where they are at.

They need to hear from recovered dealers how teens are targeted and sucked in. How ecstasy is routinely laced so as to increase addictivity. They need to hear in their own language how messed up someone got and still is from using methamphetamine.

Of course, there is a risk in this. The kids who listened to the fellow in the wheelchair certainly won't think twice about getting bombed on the weekend. They'll still party hard just as he did.

But many of them, some for sure, will choose not to drive afterwards or get in someone's car who has been partying hard with them.

They'll remember how his friend was killed and how he used to snowboard every winter and skateboard every summer. They'll remember how small and alone he seemed in his wheelchair.