Mr. Speaker, illicit drug use certainly exists, but many people abuse prescription drugs. Unfortunately, sometimes people go through grandma's medicine cabinet looking for interesting things. Those are tragic situations. In many cases, community approaches are more successful than criminalization and repression.
Keeping people from engaging in these bad habits by making positive activities available often has an impact on drug use among youth. When they have access to leisure spaces and opportunities to participate in these activities, that has a positive impact in terms of drug use. Drug use drops when there is better support for the community and people have opportunities to do things other than use drugs.
Drug addiction is a complex issue. We have to take a community-based approach and conduct broad consultations with all stakeholders if we want to eliminate this problem or reduce its impact.