SCARED STRAIGHT STUDENTS TACKLING THEIR SCHOOLS

Don't do drugs.

That phrase may be a cliche but it gained maximum meaning among 10
Valley kids recently scared straight after visiting Vancouver's
drug-plagued Downtown Eastside.

"What scared me most was the way people (addicts) there looked, their
situation and the way they don't like what they're doing there but
can't help themselves," George Bonner student Louise Nickerson, 14
said. She and her friends received Scared Straight certificates from
Duncan Mayor Phil Kent on Monday.

Their four-day visit through the Scared Straight Program was captured
on video by four Cowichan secondary school film students.

Program leader Pierre Morais' youth intervention team will use
Cowichan secondary's video, now being edited, during upcoming
anit-drug visits to Valley middle schools.

Members will show the video, then host a question and answer session
aimed at making sure their peers share the impact of what they saw.

Nickerson and the others stressed Scared Straight should be a must
experience for all students wishing to avoid becoming junkies.

"I don't want to see any of my friends in the Downtown Eastside," she
adds.

The Vancouver trip offered a special warning for Samantha Henderson,
14, who says her family has a history of drug and alcohol abuse.

"It definitely had a big effect on me," the Quamichan middle school
Grade 9 student said of Scared Straight.

"I was talking about it for three weeks after. "It's not worth doing
drugs even once to be an addict for the rest of your life."

Henderson was surprised at the sheer number of addicts on the streets
and most shocked after seeing a junkie named Sebastian shoot up.

Grace Fox, 13, of Lake Cowichan secondary aims to avoid addiction
after the harrowing Vancouver trip.

"The scary part is that you might say `yes' if offered drugs," she
says, fascinated by the addicts' stories.

"We got to see it from an insider's point of view; we got to know them
as people," Fox says. "These are someone's mother, father, son or daughter.

"Seeing it all first-hand is way different than someone telling you
not to do drugs."

Cow High Grade 11 pupil Jeremy MacDowell, 16, said he was on the
defensive in the Eastside and some street people didn't like his attitude.

"I'd stare them down because someone told me if addicts sense you're
nervous they'll harass you," he explains.

"But one prostitute just spat in my face."

MacDowell was most spooked by the Eastside's unpredictable
nature.

"It's just the environment there; it's defend yourself. You don't feel
protected and that's what made it realistic."

Kenny Dallaway, 17, was disturbed by the effects dope has on addicts'
bodies.

"Many of them were picking scabs," he says, taken aback by the
Eastside's quagmire of junkies and mentally ill folks.

"The message is don't get sidetracked on drugs because the way you may
end up is homeless every night."