About 40 people attended a community forum at Crusoe College in Kangaroo Flat on Tuesday night.
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The forum was chaired by Drug Advisory Council of Australia president Jan Kronberg and discussed the impact of illicit substances on families, friends and communities.
Potential solutions and strategies to curb the use of drugs was also discussed by the group.
Dalgarno Institute national partnership and training officer Shane Varcoe spoke at the event.
He said the forum was about revisiting and running over statistics but more about community members recognising how they had been affected.
“We want to move away from a sense of hopelessness and inevitability, to understanding some of the bigger pictures around substance abuse,” he said.
We want to move away from a sense of hopelessness and inevitability.
- Shane Varcoe
Mr Varcoe said context is everything and that despite people intuitively knowing taking drugs is a bad idea, more than 400,000 people used some form of illicit drug in 2014.
“We want to talk about minimising harm, and maximising prevention,” he said.
“Harm minimisation is the foundation of the national drug policy. We need to change that strategy and look at the reducution of supply and demand.”
“Harm reduction is the most common strategy to use but it is also the hardest to take on.”
Mr Varcoe said while effective campaigns had been developed over many years for tobacco and alcohol, there is still no effective campaign to decrease the use of illicit drugs.
Part of the even saw community members discussing what the greatest affects drugs had on friends and family, what the real problem was with drugs and possible solutions to curb drug use.
Family violence, breakdown, loss of finance, poor health and loss of trust were the most common family factors that came from the audience.
Reasons for people being tempted into using drugs included isolation and low self esteem, peer pressure, poor role models, a ready supply and the extreme mentality of society.
One important issue that was raised was finding out the exact reason people choose to be associated with illicit drugs.
Solutions that were suggested by the audience included establishing rehab centres that were effective therapeutic communities.
Harsher penalities and more straight talking campaigns were also offered and potential solutions from the audience.
Mr Varcoe said while ice use had escalated, so too had alcohol consumption, explaining the legal drug was responsible for “the vast majority of trouble”.
“There's very few people in the ice space that didn't start with alcohol, usually between 14 and 17,” he said.
The Dalgarno Institute helps communities rediscover the proactive and protective options of best practice prevention models in the alcohol and other drug arena. Visit www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au for more.