November 21, 2025- One of my least favourite phrases in the American lexicon is “It’s better than Crack!” The media’s, and our culture’s, seeming love affair with narcotics, itself an outgrowth of alcohol and tobacco dependency, has long disgusted me. The team with which I worked today had a point, though: “Most people are not addicted to drugs.”

The MATFORCE team was waiting, prepped and ready, for me and more importantly, for the four groups of students we would inform about the uses, caveats and dangers associated with prescription drugs and their illicit/illegal counterparts that are being sold on the streets or by unscrupulous members of the medical profession.

I was guided to take this half-day assignment, probably my last at Mile Hi Middle School, a place where I have had many successful turns as a substitute teacher, over the past fourteen years-and a fair number in earlier periods of residence here. The heading said “Life Skills”, so it seemed well within my purview. Upon arrival in the classroom, I was greeted by her co-teacher from the next classroom, and appraised of the format for the morning. Then I met the MATFORCE team. (The acronym means Mobilizing Action Together for Community Empowerment.) The organization works diligently, across Arizona, to bring factual awareness of the effects of substances on the human body, and on the families and communities that are comprised of those inside all these bodies.

Each person who sat and listened, participated or absorbed the information had a different take. Most took the folder with information home with them. Some didn’t, either because they had the same lessons last year (the 8th graders) or because they just didn’t want extra papers lying around their rooms or in their backpacks. A few may have been spooked by the talk of fake Fentenyl, barbituates and amphetamines. None, however, were unaffected by the lesson.

An ounce of prevention saves a pound of cure.