A local physician is suggesting that the Educate, Develop, Grow and Excel program taught in Kamloops is outdated and ineffective.

E-R Doctor at Royal Inland Hospital Ian Mitchell says the EDGE program essentially teaches kids to not use drugs ever or you’ll life will be ruined. He says we have seen in the past that teaching kids to just say ‘no’ does not work. “They really suggest to people that if you use cannabis, the next step for you is that you’re going to be downtown, on the downtown east side shooting heroin into your eyeballs. That’s clear from the coverage of the EDGE program that marijuana consistently leads to heroin abuse.”

Mitchell says he has heard of lies being told to kids like being anywhere near fentanyl could kill you and that’s simply not true. “We know from studying the DARE program that it was ineffective and counter-productive. It actually worsened the situation. There’s no evidence that the RCMP have any evaluation plan for this program to see if it works or not. It’s just out there, it’s stigmatizing and its not helpful.”

Mitchell say it isn’t just drug use where this is a problem, we saw it with sex education as well. “We went through a period where ‘We should does tell all children not to have sex’ and at some point we realized that abstinence based education it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for sex, it doesn’t work for drugs. And that’s why people who follow the science have moved towards harm reduction.”