The Okotoks RCMP along with the Okotoks Oilers and the Vancouver City Police are teaming up to deliver a first hand experience on drugs and addiction in Vancouver this month.

Participating players will accompany members of the Okotoks RCMP Crime Reduction Unit to Vancouver, where they will tour East Hastings Street and downtown Vancouver, areas notorious for drugs, disease and poverty.

Constable Jeff Girard with the Okotoks RCMP Crime Reduction Unit says it's all a part of program "Keep Straight."

"We're going to bring some local hockey players with the Okotoks Oilers to see some first hand drug experience with people who have dealt with drugs their entire lives, and people who are suffering from drug addictions and how they live their everyday life."

The participating Oilers will then come home and talk to students at Foothills schools about what they saw and learned on their trip, with the goal of education through their experiences.

"We want to get awareness out to kids who haven't been exposed to drugs in their lives, and let them make informed decisions for their future." Girard says.

In 2014, Girard took players from the Fort McMurray Oil Barons on the same trip and he said it was a life changing experience for those youth.

"We experienced sounds, sights and smells that you're not going to get anywhere else in the province or in even in the country." Girard adds "Those things stay with you, and the messages that the residents we'll talk to are stories of someone having everything; Work, Money and a family - to someone who, within years, loses everything to their addictions."

During the trip they may also get to visit and experience the Canada Border Protection Services as they monitor the flow of drug traffic into the country through the major coastal port.

The players leave Friday, September 1.

 

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