By Madeline Zoerb

Special to the Weekly

Youth leaders on Lopez have created a project to support parents and community members who want to send a clear message to kids about how they feel about the underage use of drugs and alcohol. The project will be presented to the community on April 21, at 7 p.m. at Woodmen Hall. Everyone is welcomed to come and participate.

The D.R.E.A.M. Team, which stands for Drug Related Education Awareness Mentors, is a group of youth who are trying to prevent kids, from doing drugs and alcohol in our community. Some of the team members went to a training known as the National Youth Leadership Initiative held at the North Cascade Institute, where they learned how to create prevention projects for their community.

At the training, they looked at data about kids from Lopez. This data also called the Healthy Youth Survey indicated middle school kids attitude changed by the time they reach high school, about whether they think marijuana is harmful. The same change happens with alcohol use. In middle school, kids think adults feel it is wrong for kids to use alcohol and marijuana. By high school, this percentage goes down and students do not think adults disapprove of teens using marijuana or alcohol.

One of the things The D.R.E.A.M. Team learned in their training is when the perception of use goes down, use goes up. So this means when kids don’t think adults disapprove, they will use more alcohol and/or marijuana. The team also learned parents still have a lot of influence with their kids. They decided to encourage parents to send a clear message they did not support their kids in the use of underage drinking, marijuana and/or drug use.

The D.R.E.A.M. Team is currently doing another leadership project. The project includes a pledge and sticker. The pledge is a contract for parents to sign, to say they will not serve drugs or alcohol to youth in their home. When the parents/ community members sign the pledge the team gives them a sticker to place on their car or home window to show everyone they have signed the pledge.