DEALING AS CAREER OPTION

So often, according to youth worker Peter Wearne, drug dealing is a matter
of simple economics.

"Entry points" to the workforce are closed off so completely that some
teenagers choose to trade in drugs because it is accessible and relatively
lucrative work, Mr Wearne said yesterday.

"You don't have to be a genius to sell drugs. It can make a young person a
couple of thousand dollars a week," he said.

"These are not 'Mr Bigs'. There are very few people who see this as an
entrepreneurial choice but we have to survive. So what do we do? Drugs are
an economy that is accessible to people who have no other opportunities."

A fortnight ago Mr Wearne, of the statewide Youth Substance Abuse Service,
cut a refreshingly unfashionable figure in the Victorian Parliament - a
fresh voice telling politicians that their policies were excluding young
people from education and work and, in some cases, leading them to drugs.

He believes that while most young people have thrived over the past two
decades, the seriously disadvantaged minority are worse off now than they
were then.

"We need to understand that drug use in the community is not about the
drug. It's about a whole range of complex issues that are social and
economic," he said.

"Often there is a lack of a culture of work in families that is being
handed from generation to generation. There is a whole part of that
generation that, just because of their background, don't have any options.
Unless we create opportunities that figure is going to go up."

Some of his concerns are echoed in a leaked report from the Federal
Government's youth taskforce, Footprints to the Future, which criticises
the lack of employment opportunities for young people, saying many find the
Job Network too complex.

Work for the Dole was not properly linked to local networks which could
provide accredited training, and education levels were too low for New
Apprenticeships.