The Scared Straight Tour teaches youth about the dangers of addiction by letting them see first hand the devastation it creates. We do this by giving the youth a 48 hour tour of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (located in British Columbia, Canada) which is the most infamous skid row in all of North America. During the tour, the youth will get to see how devastating addiction can be by witnessing for themselves the lives of the people in this drug infested ghetto.
The Downtown Eastside is home to approximately 6500 drug addicts and about 2000 homeless people and when taking the tour the participants get to interact and speak to the people who call this area home and those who work there. The youth will see homeless people living on the streets and in back alleys, they will hear, from the addicts, workers and residents, how horrible life is for them down there.
They will hear from almost everyone they encounter how “it all starts by drinking beer and smoking pot and thinking it’s no big deal”. They will see people struggling, in the most appalling conditions, just to survive and do whatever they can to find money to get their next fix. We have taken over 1000 youth on this tour, and without almost no exceptions, every youth has all walked away with a drastically different perspective on the supposedly “harmlessness” of drinking or doing drugs.
NOTE TO U.S. RESIDENTS: This particular program only runs out of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. As far as we know there are no other similar programs anywhere else in the world. Anyone wishing to make use of this program will have to come to Vancouver, BC. Thank you.
The next tour is taking place from April 27th-29th 2012. We also have 3 tours planned for May (May 14-16th, May 23-25 & May 28-30th). Contact us if you wish to join any of those tours.
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I am extremely pleased with the new developments in our program as I think this will make an even bigger difference in the lives of even more people by helping them maintain a life free from addiction. I have dedicated my career (since 1997) to helping those suffering from this horrible affliction but my involvement with addiction goes much further back. Having grown up in a family where alcoholism was rampant, and having developed a serious addiction myself, which almost cost me my life when I was in my 20's, I take addiction and the devastation it causes very seriously.