Closing Remarks
Daniel Schecter
Deputy Director for Demand Reduction (Acting)
Office of National Drug Control Policy
United States
This conference really began four days ago with
NIDA’s research conference. On Wednesday
were the pre-conference sessions, the reception,
and the play “Halfway There,” followed by two
days of plenary and breakout sessions, which
were really like conferences within conferences.
So, it’s been a very, very intense four days. Our
heads are filled with information and ideas.
Think about how different the first U.S./Mexico
conference two years ago was from this
conference. In El Paso, Americans and
Mexicans working on drug abuse problems didn’t
really know each other. They weren’t familiar
with what each other was doing. They weren’t
familiar with the problems in the others’ country.
They certainly weren’t working together very
much. We didn’t have Susan Kunz’s Border
Center for the Application of Prevention
Technology. None of those things existed. It
was a very different kind of meeting.
But look at this conference. The whole
atmosphere was different. It was much more
collegial, much more businesslike. We got
together and talked about ongoing projects,
areas in which we were already working
together. And we discussed what we were going
to do next together. So, I think we’ve come a
tremendously long way in two years. And we
should give ourselves a lot of credit for that.
A final thought. We were asked by Eugenia
Ortega to focus these conferences on youth. I
think that’s a wonderful suggestion, the right
suggestion. A few moments ago, Sofia gave me
this shirt with the name of the Mexico youth
coalition on it. When you’re in the drug
prevention field, you often come home from
meetings of this sort with at least one T-shirt.
But this is a special shirt. In fact, I think
I will put it on the wall in my office, to remind
me of the good and important things that come
out of the work that we’re doing together. It’s
not just another shirt with a slogan on it. This is
a real tangible example of a coalition of Mexican
youth committed to drug prevention that didn’t
exist before we began this bi-national
cooperation in El Paso two years ago. So, I’m
going to be very proud of having this shirt on
my office wall.
With that thought, let’s bring this conference to
a close and let’s give ourselves a great big hand
for what we’ve accomplished together.
