Speaker says knowing the truth is key to ending drug crisis

Drugs are not going to go away, Michael DeLeon, founder of Steered Straight, told a group of parents and community members Monday night at Kasson-Mantorville Middle School, and the only way to stop the crisis of vaping and fentanyl and other drugs is to tell the truth about them to kids.

DeLeon was in Dodge County this week to talk to students in the K-M, Hayfield and Triton school districts as well as have the meeting for the entire community. The events were sponsored by Dodge County Public Health’s Opioid Task Force.

DeLeon explained that he started Steered Straight after years of drug use and serving 12 years in prison. With a troubled childhood, he said, he was addicted at 11 and continued using drugs until he was 30. He explained that “God helped me” get off drugs and when he was released from prison in 2007, he wanted to “prevent kids from being like me.”

He now spends his time speaking with kids, teachers, staff, parents and community members. “You have heard it ‘takes a village.’ If we don’t educate the whole village we are in trouble,” he said.

He said when he talks to kids, from elementary school to high school, he doesn’t talk about drugs, he talks about life. Everyone makes mistakes, he said, but one should learn from the mistakes. It is about getting high on life, not high on drugs, he said.

The current generation, he said, will respond if they are told the truth about drugs, vaping and the dangers of fentanyl. Minnesota, he added, is in the top ten states with deaths from fentanyl.

His own experience, he said, was similar to what studies have shown about those addicted to drugs.

He began, he said, with the “trifecta gateway.” He was first offered nicotine, then alcohol and then marijuana, he said, and that started him on the path to other drugs. Use of substances at an early age is the problem because the brain is still developing. The prefrontal cortex of the brain, he said, is not fully developed until age 26.

DeLeon said he first worked with a program that thought bringing kids into prisons where they could listen to the inmates “yell at them” was the way to deter them. But studies showed that 80% of those who were involved in those programs still ended up in prison and 15% died before they were 18.

Deleon said he decided the way to reach kids was to talk to them in school and “learn from my mistakes.” Adults can’t make kids drug proof, he said, but rather make them drug resistance. For parents, he said, this means talking to your kids. The truth about drugs is that they are a lie and kids don’t like lies.

“We have to stop polarizing our kids, drugs,” he said. No matter your politics, he said, don’t let people divide you over kids and drugs. Talk to kids about getting a natural high, he said, such as sports, music, God. Even dogs and cats, he said.

Respiratory disease is the #3 cause of death for adults. For those 18-45 it is fentanyl as a cause of death. On the streets, he said, fentanyl is a poison, it is a fake fentanyl.

The strategies Big Tobacco used to defend nicotine, are now being repeated by those denying the dangers of vaping. Likewise, he said, is the sale of gummies and edibles. They are being sold in packaging that mimics those of candies and food that even the youngest kids consume.

More kids, he added, are now vaping with their parents’ knowledge and blessing.

These kids are not bad kids, he stressed, they are good kids making bad decisions because of bad information. This is a medical issue, he said, no different than smoking cessation. It is easier to get off meth than vapes, he said.

This is the authenticity generation, he said, of today’s kids. They are sick of lies; they want the truth. The only way to keep it out of schools is to get kids to know the dangers.

“If kids really know how bad vaping is, they will quit vaping,” he said. Much like the decrease in cigarette smoking if they know the truth they will not vape.

There is a drug crisis, he said, and “the only way to get this to end is if the kids end it.