Helping youth stay drug-free
National Post,

At 40, CODA is building on its success

The Council on Drug Abuse turns 40 this year, and it has plenty to celebrate. Starting out small, and sometimes without staff, it has spent more than four decades playing a vital role in educating school children about the dangers of all forms of drug abuse, from prescription and over-the-counter products right up to illegal street drugs such as crystal meth, cocaine and heroin.

Those early years have seen success build on success. Now CODA is in the midst of becoming a truly national force for drug abuse education with three core programs, all designed to use the untapped power of students educating and engaging fellow students in the battle against drugs.

"This is a truly exciting time," says Anne Marie Wright, CODA board chair. "We have adapted best practices from around the world to create programs we believe will be potently effective in attacking the challenges of drug abuse where they most often start -- with young people.

"We are also harnessing the power of health promotion intermediaries across the country. They can, and are, willing to play an important role as educators and monitors of drug use, misuse and abuse.

"And, at the same time, we have engaged in an innovative fundraising campaign on the grassroots level that will see our operating budget more than double."
CODA's approach is, and continues to be, based on common sense. The idea, as originally formulated by founder Murray Koffler, is to create programs that attack drug abuse from both sides of the equation: Supply and demand.

At the same time, CODA early on recognized that the nature of drug abuse differs from region to region, that there was a major role to play in both monitoring abuse of drugs, that young people were the key to reducing demand and that involving them in the education process would prove to have the greatest effect in the long run.

"To be truly effective, all of this has to be done on a national level," says CODA executive director Lesley Whyte. "Now, after four decades of building, we are in a position to roll our programs out to 104 regions across Canada. But while we will soon be truly national, it will be a national organization based on deep and abiding ties to local roots."

CODA has indeed struggled over the years, says Hamilton-based author Dea Clarke, who, with the late Hilda Wilson, wrote the group's official history, 40 Years of Empowering Youth, published this month.

"In the early years funds were decidedly limited," she says. "The generosity of Murray Koffler and Frank Buckley of Buckley's Cough Syrup fame kept it going."

But in the 1970s CODA was able to expand its reach into Ontario high schools because of the efforts of then-president Fred Burford, and in the late 1980s, when the Ontario government made drug education in high schools mandatory, CODA truly came into its own.
"Now it has a truly impressive range of programs," Ms. Clarke says.

The three key pillars of the CODA approach are its comprehensive in-class education programs for students in Grades 7, 8 and 9, its CODA Certitied Education (CCE) program for health promotion intermediaries and its Youth Advisory Council.

The in-class education program, launched this year, will see that each grade 7, 8 and 9 class receives three presentations a year on the causes, physical and mental impact and long-term dangers of drug abuse. The program also includes extensive surveying and tracking, which will be able to measure its success.

The CODA Certified Education program provides standardized training and certification to the men and women who will deliver these programs -- another first in Canada -- and enables them to expand their reach into any community group with a compelling desire to understand the problem and play a role in addressing it.

The Youth Advisory Council is a system of school, regional, provincial and national student advisory groups that will help create local drug abuse programs, advise CODA on both continuing and future programs and spearhead local fundraising efforts.

That's just their signature programs. They have also created a range of other support resources, such as an online database of drugs, countertop displays and a series of documentaries called Crossroads, where former teen addicts tell their own stories. Next on their list is the creation of a website for parents that will contain vital information and support resources to help at home.

But CODA will need financial support to roll out this ambitious program and deliver it where it will have most effect -- in each community across Canada.

"We believe every company and every organization and every level of government that has a stake in the well-being of Canada's young people can play a role in this enormous challenge," Ms. Wright says. "With their support, we can end the growing threat drug abuse poses to all Canadians."