‘Pay now or pay later’

Community intervention needed to fight culture of addiction: professor

More than a decade ago Dennis Kimberley was asked by media to comment on reports of gas-sniffing kids in Labrador communities.

Tuesday he was asked to do the same, and his answers remained unchanged. Professional community treatment — that’s it.

Hire counsellors who specialize in gas or solvent abuse by teens to work in these communities over the long term. These people are highly trained and are more qualified to treat these cases than typical youth or substance abuse counsellors, said Kimberley.

“I’d be recommending the same thing today. If the community has this problem now, what they need is a major community intervention. What they need is group intervention with the children with professionals on site to do this,” he said.

A professor at MUN’s school of social work, Kimberley teaches courses on both child protection and addictions. He is a respected authority on these issues worldwide.

In January 2001, The Telegram interviewed Kimberley on the same subject.

At that time, gas-sniffing teens in the former community of Davis Inlet were making headlines again. This was about one year before the whole community packed up and moved to the newly constructed hamlet of Natuashish.

At the time, a political storm between the local band council, the province and the federal Department of Indian Affairs was raging over what to do with dozens of kids from the town who were chronic gas and solvent abusers. They disagreed on what form of treatment would be best.

Eventually it was decided to send the kids for group therapy in St. John’s. Band members were hired to help monitor, and interpret for, the kids.

Those children returned home after a few months. Some kept abusing gas, and some stayed clean.

There has been news coverage since — the same problem framed a different way.

The issue continues to be a sore spot for the communities involved. Sarah Leo, Nunatsiavut president-elect, said in an interview Tuesday that it’s a difficult issue to deal with, but it’s not unique to Labrador.

“Substance abuse is an issue within the region. Like most regions, it’s not …” she said, letting the thought trail off.

“It’s a very touchy subject, but it’s something that has to be addressed, for sure. How you’re going to do that, I’m not sure. ... We have problems with alcohol abuse. We have problems with drug abuse, but like most regions or most communities, it exists. How you deal with it, or how you tackle it, well, that’s something we’ll have to take a look at for sure and maybe provide more support if necessary. Or if we start maybe having healthier communities, people will start living healthier lifestyles. I don’t know how to describe it.”

Some commenters, including some of the kids who are sniffing

Dennis Kimberley,

MUN professor

Dennis Kimberley

The children are looking for a place to belong and one of the places they can belong is with their peers.

gas, have blamed parents for the problem. Others have decried a lack of funding for addictions services in the communities.

Kimberley believes those are contributing factors that are inhibiting recovery, but are not, in and of themselves, the root of the problem.

“It is a group mentality, but the other part is of course that the children are looking for a place to belong and one of the places they can belong is with their peers,” he said.

In an article in Tuesday’s edition of The Telegram, Natuashish Chief Simeon Tshakapesh said the community has tried hard to provide alternative activities for the children. He gave examples of a new recreation centre and sports programs, as well as plans for a youth club.

Tshakapesh was responding to comments from mothers of gassniffing kids who said their children had turned to substance abuse partly out of boredom.

Kimberley applauded those initiatives, but said they are only part of a much larger solution.

“This is the problem with this level of involvement (in substance abuse). You see it’s very easy to stop drinking. The hardest part is to stay stopped. So it’s going to be the same with these kids. You can give them an educational program, you can give them positive alternatives, and they can stop the use. The problem is staying stopped. And because of the heaviness and the high-risk of what they’re doing, they would need something more therapeutic,” he said.

That’s where specialized counsellors, reinforced by positive role models from the community, would come in.

That positive involvement from the community is key, said Kimberley.

It has been widely reported that some of the gas sniffing kids are abusing substances because of their dysfunctional home lives; alcohol has been a problem in the community.

Some have commented that it is impossible to stop kids from sniffing gas while their parents are just as abusive to other substances. Kimberley somewhat disagrees. “What I would say is, yes, it would be really good if the parents who are at high risk would at least deal with their issues so they move to lower risk. Given that that’s not likely to happen with all the parents that are at high risk, the next best thing is for the adults who are more functional to do more monitoring and mentoring,” he said.

But the parents can only do so much, given their situation, without support from their fellow Canadians, through government funding, Kimberley said.

The solution to the problems facing the youth of Natuashish and other communities are not simple; they are deep-seated, systemic problems that could take a long time — and be expensive, he said.

But in the end, it will be worth it in order to relegate images of kids huffing bags of gas to the history books, said Kimberley.

“This is the message I would give to all levels of government: you gotta pay now or pay later, but you gotta pay.

“And if we do it the cheap way, if we do it the simplistic way ... then don’t expect any better results than we had the last time.”