STUDENTS CLARIFY POSITION ON DRUGS

To the editor,

Re: "Safe injection sites not supported for the city," News, Feb. 27.)

With regards to this article, we students from London secondary school, who
are members of the District Education Committee, would like to address a
pressing issue which we cannot let pass without clarification.

On March 25, as we sat down at the District Education Committee meeting, we
were extremely excited to have the opportunity to take part in a discussion
regarding the drug problem in our community. Leaving the meeting, we felt
we'd voiced our thoughts, which hopefully would spark further discussion
with Richmond RCMP Cpl. Davis Wendell.

As Wednesday morning came around, we were thrilled to see Cpl. Wendell's
plans for our community addressed on the front page of the News. However,
to continue reading the article we turned to page 6. There, we were utterly
disgusted to find the headline, "Student says it's acceptable to smoke
marijuana in school." We felt that this headline was put there to capture
the attention of readers, but did not reflect whatsoever what we were there
to say.

Not only were our thoughts misrepresented through the headline, but
publishing Christine McCreary's name suggested to the reader that she was
in fact responsible for it. Even sadder still, it was disturbing to see
that she was paraphrased and not quoted. This goes to show that her words
spoken at the meeting were manipulated to satisfy the eye of the reader.

Playing with words in this manner truly affected Christine's reputation.
Family, friends and other community members have approached her since and
expressed their deep disappointment to her apparent "view on drugs."
Ironically, Christine and the three of us were at that meeting to express
our thoughts about the problems of drugs in our community - not to promote
them.

It is completely unjustifiable to place someone's reputation on the line,
all the while knowing that those who do not know her personally could be
completely mislead.

We held faith that our contributions at the meeting were going to be
presented to the public in the way they were spoken. We could never have
imagined that volunteering in a group to voice our opinions on issues that
are a problem in the community would backfire on us the way that it has. It
isn't that our opinions and thoughts on this issue were simply altered
slightly, they were totally manipulated by the media and completely
obscured when published in the newspaper.

This has been quite the experience for all of us. But, as with any
experience, there is a lesson learned. We were mislead in our belief that
the newspaper would support us by allowing our voices to be heard
throughout the community. Although this was not the case, we've come to
learn that no matter what stands in our way, nothing will stop us from
making a difference.

Daniela Frey

Julie Escalante

Christine McCreary

Marc Douglas

London secondary school