Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What the police are telling me is that trends that we see in southern Canada are slowly coming north. They're using soft drugs to hook kids and getting them onto harder drugs. What's happening in southern Canada, then, is the kids turn to B&Es and robberies. The average cost to feed a drug addict's habit is estimated at $88,000 to $100,000 a year, in B&Es and in robberies. Young females in southern Canada sell their bodies for drugs. The police see the beginning of that trend here in the Northwest Territories.

The drug elements are more sophisticated and I think that we, as a society, have to become more sophisticated. Communities like Yellowknife and Iqaluit don't stand on their own; they're feeder communities to the smaller communities, so the problems that you see here are problems that are spreading throughout all our communities in the Northwest Territories.

Parents and educators need help. This is not just a police problem or just a school problem or a government problem, this is a community problem. Everybody in the community must be aware of the problem and must be involved in the solution. I say to people that if you see any drug activity, report it to the police. A lot of people don't and the police are very frustrated because they're not getting enough assistance from the community at large. Parents should get more involved in their schools. If you want to do something about this problem, parents have to get involved. Parents should write to their school boards, to their MLAs, to their aldermen. If your kids are experimenting with drugs, talk about it. I think too many people are ashamed of it. Drug use is happening in every family, in the best of families, and unless people acknowledge that it's happening and seek counselling, we're never going to get a solution to this problem.

What I would like to conclude with, Mr. Speaker, is that all of us have a part to play in the fight against drug use, especially among our young people. It's a community problem. The government and the police have a very strong role to play in providing support mechanisms and providing coordination, and we do need a coordinated approach. I want to really emphasize, Mr. Speaker, that at the end of the day, this increasing problem in our schools, if we don't deal with it now the problem five years from now is going to be very difficult to control. All of us have a responsibility to do what we can do to control the increasing use of drugs in our schools. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause