The death of a teenager shocked Marijampolė: after the terrible tragedy, they recognize what is missing the most in schools

“Many schools have a dismissive view of preventive activities and they should be of a different quality. (…) The soft ones (means – ELTA) are most effective, that prevention should be started as early as possible. The participants of the MIA system, the police, are most affected by the consequences, and prevention should be started as early as possible,” A. Ladek told LRT radio on Tuesday.

“The goal is not to punish the young person – the primary need is to help.” (…) When we no longer know how to help a young person overcome his problems, there is a need to search things with dogs. Those hard measures (…) must appear only when there is already an indication of a specific criminal act,” the representative of the ministry noted.

She also pointed out that often young people themselves can tell what information is missing and what help they need. In order to achieve this, according to A. Ladek, it is very important to discover the ways in which information reaches young people the best.

“In June, we did simulations at the MIA – we invited more than 100 schoolchildren. They were 15-16-year-old high school students from the city of Vilnius. (…) During the simulations, we learned that there is no secure system to notify them if there is any distribution going on or if they know people from whom drugs can be purchased – there is no clear system. There is a lack of knowledge about the consequences, damage, effects”, says A. Ladek.

“We often think that we do everything, but often even useful information about legal consequences, harm, effects, use of psychotropic substances does not reach young people, because we do not speak their language and on their channels,” noted A. Ladek.

The vice-president of the Lithuanian School Students’ Union (LMS) Emilis Mikulskis seconded the representative of the ministry and emphasized that the preventive measures currently applied in many schools are generally not effective.

“There are too few soft tools that are of high quality and tested, and we usually invest in drawing contests and call it our best soft tool”, E. Mikulskis criticized the existing preventive programs in schools.

The most effective measures are continuous, notes E. Mikulskis.

“(Effective – ELTA) would be continuous prevention programs, not a one-time lecture once every six months or “Drugs are bad” drawing contests.” (…) These are not effective soft measures – they are preventive programs”, noted E. Mikulskis.

As the portal lrt.lt reported, teenagers who gathered in Marijampolė on the weekend may have been poisoned by narcotic substances, one of them could not be saved – doctors declared the death of a 17-year-old. Two other young people ended up in the hospital.