Bronx teens create safe spaces to mentor and fight against drug use
NEW YORK (PIX11) -- Since cannabis sales became legal in New York three years ago, the drug has become highly accessible to teens and adults under 21, even though it's illegal for them to buy and use marijuana.
The large majority of school-age teens don't use cannabis, but studies show that most people in their demographic don't know that their peers don't consume it. Getting that information disseminated, as well as other educational information, to young people is one of the ways that the community organization WHEDCo. tries to serve families in New York.
Its acronym stands for the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation, but the group has expanded to far more areas of involvement than housing in its nearly four decades of existence.
One of those areas is youth education. WHEDCo's JAM program is its educational mainstay.
JAM does exactly what its name stands for: Just Ask Me. It trains teens to lead other teens in after-school classes that discuss and analyze sensitive, pertinent topics, including cannabis use.
On a recent school day, a JAM class was in session, with Nirly Molina, a tenth-grader, helping to lead the class and its nearly two dozen participants, most of whom were in seventh through ninth grades.
"Being able to educate children into the consequences that they'll face in the future will help the next generation," Molina said about why she's become a peer leader in the program. She said that it helps to "make sure that they're careful with what they do."
JAM was founded by WHEDCo. staffer Nicole Jennings. She said that it's based on the fact that young people tend to listen most closely and deeply to other young people and that middle school-aged participants and high school-age leaders benefit.
"The biggest impact a lot of this kind of education has is actually on the people who facilitate it," Jennings said in an interview. "So targeting them as the facilitators increase[s] all of our chances of actually becoming leaders."
JAM covers a wide variety of topics, from teen pregnancy to sex and sexually transmitted infections to social media use and abuse, among others. Regarding cannabis specifically, students at the school that hosted the JAM classes are personally familiar with its pervasiveness.
Across the street and a few steps away from the school, P.S./I.S. 218, is an illegal cannabis shop. When PIX11 News was there, people were rolling joints in front of the school.
As Isaac Brito, another JAM peer leader, pointed out, the scene was one of a variety of ways that young people are exposed to weed. "There's also, you know, you may not have it, but you may have a friend" who does, the tenth-grader said.
Teen peer leaders like Brito help pre-teens in the program make healthy decisions about marijuana use, including letting them know that most teens don't use it.
"I'm able to talk to another young person in a more calm, more connected type of way," Brito said. "It's not like it's your parent telling you to not do something, because then you're going to want to do it."
Lisandra Ortega, a middle schooler, is one of the students who are led by the high school-aged peer leaders. She said that their guidance has real impact.
"Since they're closer to our age, rather than adults," Ortega said, "they understand."
Evidence that JAM's life lessons last is the fact that Ortega is the daughter of someone who was herself in WHEDCo's JAM program.
Her mother, Lissette Hernandez, was a JAM student in 2002.
"It brings them that opportunity to speak and ask those questions without being screamed at," Hernandez said in an interview.
"So it's really good," she said. "It's really positive. I really like it."