WAR ON DRUGS BEGINS TODAY

The Lloydminster Area Drug Strategy and Action Committee (LADSAC)
has set their goals for 2007 and is ready to buckle down and get
to work in the community, starting today.

LADSAC, a group created in March last year, is made up of more than
a dozen prominent local organizations that have joined forces with
the City of Lloydminster to formulate a made-at-home drug action
plan. Today marks the first of a number of awareness presentations
slated for the upcoming year as Holy Rosary high school and Lloyd
Comp high school will be visited by two speakers from the Regina and
Area Drug Strategy Speakers Program. The two speakers will share
their experiences with substance abuse with students, parents, and
interested community members in the hopes of inspiring positive change.

"In trying to lay out our goal for the year, what we found was the
recurring theme was coming back around education and awareness in
the community," said LADSAC co-ordinator Teressa Krueckl. "Bringing
in different presenters and speakers to do workshops to target
different groups was a big project we wanted to undertake."

The two speakers -- a 19-year-old woman and a 19-year-old man -- are
coming from the Regina area with stories of their own personal
battles with alcohol and drug abuse. Krueckl says while this round
of presentations will be geared primarily towards high school
students, it is important for parents and the community to come out
and listen, with the hope it will better equip everyone to deal with
substance abuse in the community.

"This time around, we're going to target the high schools," said
Krueckl. "But a big piece of it for us is we want the community to
get involved. Our mission statement is around mobilizing the
community to decrease substance abuse we want parents, councilors
- -- all those in attendance -- to come and listen like everyone else."

Krueckl says while it is important to reach out to the younger age
groups to address substance abuse, the LADSAC will not focus the
presentations and workshops that are on the agenda for the year
solely on adolescents and young adults.

"They (students) are still in the age where you feel you can still
make a difference," said Krueckl. "It gets a little harder with the
older age groups because they have potentially been doing this for years.

"If kids are sitting and listening to people who are more in their
age group, they are more likely to comprehend and recognize they
maybe have some of those things going on in their life."

The presentations run from 9:56 a.m. to 10:50 a.m. this morning at
Holy Rosary and from 2:08 p.m. to 3:08 p.m. at Lloyd Comp. There
will also be a parent-volunteer luncheon at the Common Wealth Centre
from 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.