At four in the afternoon, the school gate opens. The day's lessons on drugs are over. A fifteen-year-old has sat through a lecture, or walked past a poster, or listened to an officer explain what drugs do to a life, and now he leaves, heading home, or to a street corner, or to a phone. What happens next matters. The next five hours may count for more than anything he heard that day.
Does he have someone to talk to that evening? Somewhere to be? A reason to get up early tomorrow? These questions sound unrelated to drugs, but they are not. We usually begin with the substance. It may be better to begin with the young person.
