STUDENTS HEAR ANTI-DRUG MESSAGE

A former drug user and dealer spoke to Summerland students last week
about making positive choices and rejecting drug use

On Thursday morning, Serge LeClerc, director of Teen Challenge
Saskatchewan, spoke at Summerland Secondary School and Summerland
Middle School about his past.

He became a street kid when he was 12 years old and started using
drugs at 15. Later, he ran a criminal gang with up to 70 members.

In the 1960s, he began selling drugs and in 1984 was arrested and
imprisoned after running a $40 million drug operation.

"I didn't come here to brag about my past," he says. "I was a very
evil man. I destroyed many people's lives."

He spent more than 21 years in jail, the result of bad choices he
made starting when he was young.

When he was caught breaking into houses as a child in Toronto, he
was sent to St. John's Training School where he was routinely beaten
by the teachers and abused by students.

Eventually, he became involved in more and more criminal activity.

"Kids don't realize the choices they make today have an impact for
them and those around them," he says. "The secret of life is about
your choices."

He urges students to reject drug use, including marijuana use, which
he says can lead to harder drugs.

"I've never met anyone who was an addict who didn't start with
marijuana," he says.

He adds that when he was using drugs, it was to numb the pain of
abuses he had experienced and was experiencing.

"You don't do drugs to feel good," he says, "you do drugs not to feel bad."

LeClerc was brought to schools in Summerland and the region by South
Okanagan Similkameen Crime Stoppers.