What an incredible week we had in Vienna at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs CND conference! It was our first time to Vienna, which is a beautiful city with rich history, as well as delicious coffees and pastries!
Our first business meeting was with Sara Carter, the Director of the ONDCP (Office of National Control Policy), with Amy Ronshausen from the Drug-Free America Foundation and Shane Varco from the Delgarno Institute in Australia. We were able to briefly share Johnny’s story and the work we are doing in schools. We told her of our nearly 2500 Parents of Children with Cannabis-Induced Psychosis (POCCIP) members. We encouraged a national marijuana education campaign, much like we’ve done with tobacco and other drugs. We explained the model we used in Alabama, providing video education to middle and high school health classes through the Department of Education. We are excited to visit Sara again in Washington DC in the future to discuss more about this initiative.
The group photo with the red shirts is of all our new global youth substance use prevention friends from around the globe with our shirts “prevent don’t promote”! We made new friends from Iceland, Kenya, Italy, and Australia to name a few.
I shared a breakout session with our partners Kevin A. Sabet and Luke Niforatos from Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), who brought us here to Vienna with the SAM team. We gave a session called, “Lessons Learned from Marijuana Legalization,” where I was able to share Johnny’s story and help educate the standing-room only audience about the harms of youth marijuana use. See their replay here.
John and I are honored to have had this opportunity to share Johnny’s Ambassadors Youth THC Prevention message with other countries! We never thought in our wildest dreams our work would take us here. North America definitely has a much bigger problem with high potency THC products than the rest of the world, but they will soon see this in a few years when it invades their countries and poisons their children as well! We are grateful for the chance to spread Johnny’s Ambassadors Youth THC Prevention message around the world!