Drug House Odyssey cancelled due to COVID
The Drug House Odyssey, the most important event put on the Lee County Coalition for a Drug-Free Southwest Florida, has been cancelled for the second straight year because of COVID concerns on the part of the Lee County School System.
However, the organization is going to pivot and instead bring the Drug House Odyssey to the classrooms as a way for teachers to discuss alcohol and drugs to their students.
The event, which was planned for this coming week, was a go as of last week, but with COVID cases still up due tot eh latest varient, the school system felt it better to scrub the event again.
“There were concerns about the buses and we just want everybody to be safe. We’re going to use the United Way money to make a video and have people in it who will be very interesting to the kids,” said Deb Comella, executive director for the Lee County Coalition for a Drug-Free Southwest Florida.
Comella said she is encouraging the classrooms that had signed up to be at the Lee Civic Center next week to watch the video and take up the discussion on drugs and alcohol.
Comella added the video (which recreates the Drughouse Odyssey play) is going to be updated, with interesting people appearing to speak with the youths. NFL player Tre Boston will be in the video as will U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds and Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno.
“We’re taking this in a direction to make it more interesting for the kids because when I showed it in other places, I got feedback from the kids and they were honest,” Comella said. “We need to make it better. We thought we had great role models for them. They don’t really care.”
When asked if the video is going to become the new normal, Comella said she plans to run the event in person next year.
The event, usually at the civic center, brought fifth-graders in from all over Lee County to learn about making the right decisions about drinking and driving and that the wrong decisions can be catastrophic for you and your loved ones.
The coalition also held a family night for church groups, families and scout troops to go through the odyssey, which typically was held as a mini- party. That event planned for Wednesday night also was cancelled.
The event is put on as a play, where kids are seen at a party getting drunk, someone gets pulled over and arrested for drunken driving, a courthouse scene where a judge sentences the person, the scene of a terrible accident where someone is critically injured by her friend’s decision to drive impaired, and the scene in the hospital where the injured person dies.
The coalition has typically received assistance from students from Mariner High School, the Cape Coral Police Department, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, Florida Highway Patrol, Lee County EMS, the North Fort Myers or Bayshore Fire Department and the District Attorney’s Office to put the odyssey together.
They have also brought in special guests such as Tre Boston to speak to the kids after the play about the right (and wrong) decisions he and his friends made in their lives.
For more information, visit drugfreeswfl.com.
To reach CHUCK BALLARO, please email news@breezenewspapers.xom