I think what makes it original for us is that the whole community came together with this: all of the agencies, the schools, the health and social services, pastors—the entire community pulling together, as our motto is. We were proactive in this. A lot of the communities in Alberta didn't want to talk about it. Nobody wanted to say they had a problem with methamphetamine. Whether because it would hurt their community relations or because it would hurt their economic development, nobody wanted to talk about it. Our community wanted to deal with this problem to protect the young people who were being hurt by it.
We're a very proactive community. I think that's where the difference really was for Drayton Valley; we got ahead of the problem before it got too far along. We started dealing with this long before any other community would talk about it. Many communities asked us, “Why are you discussing this? Why would you want to hurt your community and your economic development?”
We worked hard on this; we were proactive. We put in the prevention dollars and the enforcement dollars and used a holistic approach from the entire community. Our entire community was behind us on this, once we were able to let people know about this drug in particular—and this is the drug that we focused on—its devastating effects, the quick way one could become addicted to it, and the difference with respect to the chemicals that are used in this drug compared with some other drugs.
I have to say that what was unique for Drayton Valley is that we gave our citizens and the entire community the entire truth about this drug in the awareness stage. We went after it extremely hard, so that people knew.
We also were helping other communities within the province and within the country—in Saskatchewan and B.C., for example—sharing the information we had.
I think what is unique for Drayton Valley is that we have a great reputation for sharing resources and pulling our community together and making sure, if there's an issue, that we deal with the issue, as hard and difficult as it can be. That's what makes it unique.
I have to give the Province of Alberta great accolades for getting behind this initiative too, on the enforcement and the prevention side, making sure through AADAC that education and an awareness of this drug was available to lots of people in the province. They as well are working with our community, the province having the same type of approach, so that we can educate people on the harm of this drug.