Victoria the “ice” capital of South East Asia !

Today at our local State principal network we heard from Les Twentyman a long serving youth outreach worker who has supported the marginalised and at risk young people who are generally homeless and on the streets.

A few years ago he set up a charity called the 20th man, a term that was once used for the bench player in our Aussie rules football teams. The organisation does outstanding work in supporting our at risk youth in so many different ways (check out the link).

However today he was talking about the “ice epidemic” affecting our youth. My attention was caught by his statement that Victoria is the ice capital of South East Asia. Now that’s one “award” that we don’t want to win and it certainly is nothing to be proud of.

Les talked about there simply are not enough police to arrest people (or prisons to hold them) for taking and distributing “ice” if that’s our main solution to the epidemic.

Yes in our drug education curriculum (secondary schools) we do “learning” about this but he was really today talking about our linkages to youth workers as these marginalised youth are often drug affected and with that comes the irrationality, the violence and the homelessness making schools difficult places to attend or difficulty for us (teachers) in dealing with and coping ourselves with the issues.

Really an issue we need for parents in our community to understand. Part of this understanding comes from sharing information hence the clip, which we viewed a little of today, to finish my post.