“Marco Erickson: Bridging the Gap Between Youth Drug Prevention and State Legislature”

[00:00:05] Jake White: Happy Monday. Welcome back to Party Talk where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention. Today, I’m talking with Marco Erickson. He’s the program director, and you’re going to learn about this program. But basically, they engage you with prevention, they provide leadership, a place to go after school, and they’ve built this ecosystem that is just this amazing machine that keeps students involved, gets them in prevention, and builds up these leadership skills so that they’re keeping the movement going. So I’m so excited to talk with him. He’s even found his way into legislator or a state of Idaho. So let’s dive into this episode with Marco. So Marco, thank you for being on the show. If you want to just kind of tell everyone listening to the party talk podcast a little bit about you and what you do, that’d be awesome.

[00:00:56] Marco Erickson: I’m a person who has been involved in drug prevention since I was a 10 year old little boy. And then 980s. In the early days, we may have to just say no programs. So I got involved all through high school, went to college, got a master’s degree in psychology, spent a lot of years serving families in mental health, built some statewide programs was the state director of a lot of drug prevention and mental health services. And then decided I had run for the legislature, I won. My first time I’m trying out to win, legislate, and that was great. So I’m been in there for three years serve as the vice chairman of Health and Welfare, I do a lot of advocacy for drug prevention and mental health services for my state. And then I’ve been lucky to be blessed to do some national stuff as well. And on top of that, I run a local program director for Prevention Coalition community, so I kind of do a lot of great things, I try to be involved as much as I can.

[00:02:00] Jake White: I can tell man, and what a cool thing. A dream for everyone in prevention in Idaho, that they have you as part of the legislator to help out with everything, because that’s kind of one of the challenges,  with change is how do we communicate to our team and our legislation and government, the importance of it, and now they’ve got someone on the inside?

[00:02:24] Marco Erickson: It’s been very useful. Like, it takes a while to learn the process, and how to convince 100 and some other people that it’s important is not an easy task. So and learning how to write a bill or, or propose a funding source to go towards prevention. It’s not as easy as it seems. But I’ve got far enough on the path. I think this year, we’re gonna be really successful in getting some of the millennium fund dollars. Some states have already done a lot of that and dedicated and money and funding the general sources and ours have not done that yet. Mostly our federal funding to support prevention. So this is a big priority to see if we can do a little bit better at sustainability. All the providers out there doing that good work.

“A Lifelong Dedication to Youth Drug Prevention and Public Service”

[00:03:13] Jake White: And how long have you been in in the legislator?

[00:03:19] Marco Erickson: I’ve been in three years, this next session will be my fourth year session?

[00:03:24] Jake White: And now have you learned something that I’m sure you have. You could pick one thing you’ve learned that has helped you with whether it be like getting sustainable funding, or have helped you with prevention work, that other people on the outside like they’re not in government. So some of them from the inside?

[00:03:48] Marco Erickson: I’ve learned as everybody has some advocate, or lobbyist or someone, and they get organizations together, and they pull their money, and they find a way to work with one of those people, because they are what you there’s your app, they’ll go to bat for you. And they’ll work really strongly and they’ll know how to work with the legislators, and they’ll know how to write bills. So those people even though it costs a little bit of money, I always wondered how what was the value in them, they’re called lobbyists, but they’re also educators and they’re really good. All of us that are in that body. And as you don’t have one that’s working with you at some capacity, you get through volunteer way or, or you’re paying them separate manner. , outside of your grant funding, that it’s important because they’ll do some good work with you having me on the inside, they don’t have to do that. But even if they did have a lot better because that person can do more work than I can because I have to focus on a lot of projects I’m working on. I don’t have time to go to every single member of the different committees and get the votes sometimes. So it’s a very difficult process and they’re good at that. So I always recommend if you can hire someone who knows those people and works with them on a daily basis.

[00:05:10] Jake White: That’s cool. I would not have thought of that. That is awesome. And I don’t want to skip over this too. You say you started in prevention when you’re 10 years old?

[00:05:19] Marco Erickson: So my dad, when I was really young boy passed away from drunk driving acts. I don’t know, I just really loved provision. I didn’t like alcohol and drugs. I didn’t like what I saw happen to my family and other families around me. And I was just like, “Now this is a lot more fun living a healthy, free life, this stuff. So how can I help other people’s not do it?” And also join clubs that are focused on prevention, it is March and parade, we would do community cleanup service projects, and just things I had no idea that it was prevention, I just love being involved in doing something at it, we had a lot of kids just a big fun club to be a part of. But over time in high school, I got more driven specifically on specific interventions and ways of doing that got some training, just loved it, and then I went into mental health. I didn’t have a salary that had ever been educated in college at all. So as a first generation, I had no clue. And I was asked to navigate that entire college world all by myself and figured out this mental health thing is connected really well with substance abuse and I had a passion for substance abuse. I wanted to figure out how do I get paid to do what I love and in support people in our community, didn’t take a while to love our coalitions and the concept that that was there and it just matched what I do. So I had to quit providing direct care services and gave up a mental health company that I fill out and just wanted to do what’s best for the community in the prevention space, because it’s so much more impactful than having to wait until there’s a crisis that were spawned afterwards.

[00:07:09] Jake White: That’s incredible, Marco. Glad to have you on the team.

[00:07:15] Marco Erickson: My whole life, that’s what I was dedicated to. So this is how you run for a higher level office and maybe make it up to Washington, DC, and we even be able to support and do more there for people. So my hope is to carry that work forward and continue to serve in every capacity I can into the boundaries, void drug use.

“Success in Coalition Building: Lessons from Marco Erickson on Passion, Partnerships, and the Next Generation”

[00:07:39] Jake White: Well, that’s exciting. You got my vote for sure. Wherever you’re on to next, whatever I can do from Arizona, that’s great. I wanted to ask you to because when I met you at CAD committee, we’re just in the hall. Which if you’re just listening to this, you can’t tell. But you can tell who Marco is, because he’s always wearing a cowboy hat. So we would see each other around, eventually, we got talking. Did you say that there are over 100 youth involved in your like CYA program or your youth prevention club, or did I exaggerate that?

[00:08:13] Marco Erickson: No, there’s probably more than that. It’s called CYA. It’s “Community Youth Action” is our program. But this little peace sign is our line, it means we’ll see you later. As we go along, struggles with families and kids who have suicide ideation, suicidal ideation. So we wanted to make it a place where everyone feels welcome. They’re gonna feel connected to the US community in a big way. And that we need you. So see y’all later, is a way to say, tomorrow, we need you tomorrow, need you in general. So it was a suicide prevention tech technique, as well as a way to get a lot of kids engaged in the work. So we have hundreds of kids that come sporadically throughout your summer every day and are reserved one day, a week, some days, two weeks, and they all work on different projects. We have a lot going on. And inside our space, we have a 14,000 square foot building. That’s just the place where we have our teen center. And we also have next door and other space. And we send our leadership teams over there. We work really hard with kids to get them through these leadership trainings on specific to help them go and do more of that prevention work for us. Because you have to let an adult guide it is our philosophy. So you’ll always see youth with me everywhere I go. I don’t like to make decisions without them.

[00:09:42] Jake White: That’s cool. So how do you if someone is new to building a coalition and they look at you and say, Marco, you’re doing such incredible work and your team is, is expanded. They’re doing great work in the community, the youth are leading. What’s something that you see is an opportunity for other people to copy what you’re doing or what are some lessons they could take away that help them to be successful in that.

[00:10:07] Marco Erickson: What’s funny is we’ve meant to are several other coalition’s all the time and help them build and we tell them the number one formula, the most important thing you have is to individuals love that work and are deeply passionate about it is when you have that money, all those other things don’t matter, in the work matters. So the money comes, the paychecks come in, you have to do that initial foundation, and work really hard at the beginning. And then at the end, you’ll be able to look back and go, “We built this. I came on board, this coalition start 2018. I came on board January 2019.” So it was six months after, and they barely had done a whole lot of things. He just had a little tiny bit of funding, and within. But now it’s 2023, we own our own buildings, we own a fleet of vehicles, we own giant stem equipment, and we have robotics teams, sewing equipment, all kinds of really amazing things to help kids have a place to be at school. And that just requires us to write grants, talk to community members, you just do a lot of work and you build it. We are whole building two buildings now that are dedicated to youth. And one time we dreamed of a space and we started off in a church building, then we partnered with a senior citizens senator, and then COVID hit and we had to get our own state and we found a way to make it work. So when you have the drive action, anything’s possible, you just have to dream it up and make it happen.

[00:11:44] Jake White: If that’s something there, that even when I when I teach young people how to do like great prevention work. And if they’re throwing a drug free event, I always promote with a partner. And you kind of said that you said you need two people, not one, two people because one person with an idea. It’s kind of like, well, maybe this, there’s no one following them for a reason. Like the subconscious would probably say, “There’s not traction, no one is in this idea. But even just having two people shows, well, there’s at least another person who’s in on this idea was excited about it.” So there’s probably more and or what else do you attribute to your success through hard work and to people?

[00:12:27] Marco Erickson: I learned really well, because I started doing this in high school, and I was volunteering, and I watched across many states. So I engaged as a youth in national organizations like international or national teen institutes, I would build it out a bit. I would work with state after state and watch what was the common factor in a successful program, and inside a school or community? And I always see that the most successful ones, we have two people, because when they only had one, if that person were to leave, the whole entire program died, either statewide, or to that community or in that region. So you thought happened many times. And it was because they had one really passionate person promoted or married or had a child, something happens in their life, and then you just can’t have an entire program rely on that one individual, he could die in an accident, just tragic things happen. So you want to have the ability to replace people, we’re all in. I am always trying to bring up the next generation of people to replace me because I want someone that has the same level of passion. But there will be come a day where I’m not able to do all that work at the same level. And there’ll be another generation, the science is moving forward every year, we get better and better at this work. So you just got to have an educated workforce, and you’ve got to have people that are there in space. That’s what I’ve learned over time watching and seeing successful programs.

“Planting the Seeds of Prevention: The Lifelong Impact of Open Conversations and Early Education”

[00:14:00] Jake White: And what are some of the projects that you’re really proud of that the young people have done that, that you’ve been super impressed by? What kind of activities are they leading, or when you empower them to do the work?

[00:14:15] Marco Erickson: It’s a daily thing, there’s something going on every day. So I’m always proud of these students, I think the key is for the adults in their lives, to see their potential, and slide where it’s at, and put them to work using that skill. And I’ll give you a random example. And this was back before I knew how to do a lot of texting new technology, but this kid could create. He had the skill set to create animated text messages, and things that the rest of us have no clue how to do, at least at the time. And so he could send out a communication to every team that we had in so you use that talent. Like, that’s where your strength is, and his strength was not public speaking, but another team was public speaking. So we put their talents and use their will put them in front of audiences and allow them to be flighty and, and do skits and engage with the community in that way. So we put people where their strengths are, and we build up their strengths where they don’t see that potential that we see. So that’s as tight as it answers your question, there’s so much to be proud of we do things every single day. So, actually, tonight, we will be hosting our final summer boss party. And that event usually brings as a community, just a neighborhood. And we go and deliver invitations about 2000, 1500 invitations to homes around that park, we host events, and there’s blow up bouncy houses, and there’s adult tanks and this carnival activities but all free. And it’s designed to get people to communicate and talking to each other and their neighbors. And getting out again, knowing we and the kids plan and we made plan clear back in March, April, in May, is the final of 5000 or 6000 people attend those. So when you think about that is a huge accomplishment takes months of work and the kids, they show up, they run booths, and they help set the whole event up and tear it all down. Those are things that are very successful, and they work on for months. And it feels like it is just one day, but I look back at him like that was a lot of work you guys. And I’ll always proud of them. They write new skits every year, they’re designed to empower their peers. And they may just take a piece of music and write a story related to act it out on stage. And that makes it a lot of fun to watch that would chime and schools and we’re community events and what I really think is the most fun is when you make the all the people cry, who are looking at your names because they’re connecting to the issue. And that that to me means that they have a personal connection. And also they see the power, the magic of what we do as a team. And our kids are really good at those kits. And making people feel connected to the issues that we’re presenting to them and, and solutions that we’re presenting. Because we’re saying, why haven’t us around, and all these, we’re putting all these things in place to give kids skills or resiliency training and resiliency skills and a place to be in the community. We’re reducing all these other problems, and it’s not costing a whole lot of money. If you wait till it’s a problem, you’re spending a lot. So those things I’m most proud of the teens.

[00:17:47] Jake White: That’s so true. And that that our resources often go to when it’s really late in the process where like, how do we react to this, and where the prevention work comes in is. And what’s so cool too is you have these young people that who knows there might be another Marco in the group who’s going to get involved in prevention professionally later, or going to government and even if they don’t, they’re going to bring this leadership skills, this mindset of positive mental health into their jobs and influence their friends into their schools. So it’s just such a cool model. And I love that y’all have kind of expanded into different areas, because you mentioned the CYA group, which is kind of the youth led group and then you have the teen center. And then you also have something called spark I saw that is it kind of restorative.

[00:18:42] Marco Erickson: It’s a brand new project we put together in partnership with the legislature and we have a behavioral health council in our state. That is it’s very unique because it has the judicial branch, the executive branch and the legislative branch working together on behavioral health issues and their recommendations partnered with some of the stuff I worked on, we ended up with $12 million to put across the state to do an entire community assessment centers, which are more like a screening center. And it’s designed to catch those situations really early and it’s all free. And Sally’s don’t have to feel intimidated. They get to come over to the center and get everything free, be connected with any services, they’ll spring it for substance abuse or where we have all kinds of issues, even head lice, or skirting on it. Families trailer when their heat was out, really pulled where we live. So we find the resources to link families to help them not have to focus and worry about that one issue that day. And we did that on a statewide approach when the first state to do it as a statewide approach. Many other states have like one or two of those centers around I’ve visited, several of them across the country. But when you’re researching that you’re like, “This is impactful. And it helps us reduce the kids going into the juvenile correction system, and the protection systems like youth protection, child protective custody.” And so that’s kind of the goal is to divert those and then someday we’ll measure the cost savings, that’s going to be our hope is to show a major cost savings. We had a case just last week where law enforcement had a runaway child. And usually those cases where they have a runaway, they would have to spend 6, 7, 8 hours of their time interacting family dealing with the case, putting the kid in the middle of the night, they call us, our team respond. And then we had the law enforcement, pop them over to the center. And they were able to go back out on the street, and we collaborate with the parents. So that’s what SPARC is. It’s a really amazing place the stats for “Safety Prevention and Resource Center”. And it’s next door in the building next door. So we can refer kids from our program needs actually supports. But we also take referrals for law enforcement and schools and any community member that just says, this family may need. And then if they’re teenagers, and they want to participate in our other stuff we offer will show them that. We have community closets where there’s clothing, food, various resources that we have right here in our building for all teens. And it’s all free all the time. So we get a lot of donations, because people want to make sure you always have good quality things for these families. So we’re super blessed in that way, that’s the SPARC program and we’re proud of that.

[00:21:40] Jake White: I would be like what a win for the community just in public health and community wellness to have that in town, that is so incredible. And that it did this, like you kind of mentioned, it’s a scope of thing, whatever their basic needs are or their needs, they can at least go there for a resource. That’s really cool.

[00:22:03] Marco Erickson: We also got a crisis center in our community. And we had, so we bring all the community partners together. And rather than us doing everything, we were like, “Who would be willing to do this, and we would help them write the grant and another agency stepped up.” So they have the juvenile crisis center. And we already had adult crisis centers and recovery centers and support centers. So we’re doing a much better job right now than ever before in connecting in that preventative space, or in the early phase, and really tried to mitigate those things before they get really bad. I find great joy that in you, we can never really measure that long term impact. Like you said earlier, when you talked about another Marco. When I was a kid, and I was little, and they put me in those programs. And I didn’t have any idea at all, you were saying, I’m an ever go doing some of these things is that I was shy until I went to one of those teeny Institute for as long as 16. And I realized, this is my people. I came out of my element as I got confidence that I’m just like every other team, they come in, they’re a little shy and then I know I get people say, “He talks too much”. I get invited to be like keynote speakers at events days. So it’s kind of funny. One of the best thing, and then I went back to my own Middle School, that they used to joke and have me, they tell us sit down, be quiet so they can take a slot. So that was kind of like it’s funny to come back and have a full circle.

[00:23:53] Jake White: That is really funny. This just gave it to my mind too. So my parents were cleaning out the attic. All of our junk from, what 15 years of living in our hometown. And they found this piece of paper I must have done for a class project. And either or maybe I can’t remember specifically, but in my mind, it was either a class project, or maybe it was something one of the coalition was doing, like a poster contest or something. But I drew at a young age, this person that had like a green face, like it was like they were gonna throw up. And it just said, being drunk really sucks. And it was spelled wrong. Like, I was young enough. I didn’t know how to spell. All I knew at that point is my parents were really open to me about the issues that were going on in our family at how alcohol and drugs were related to those issues. And at some point, I must have had some kind of prevention experience because I made this poster and my parents saved and found it later. And now I’m this person that’s doing drug prevention as a professional. So it was something I can’t even remember. But I just thought back thinking that is incredible, that maybe a seed was planted. I don’t know, or, or just the fact that my family talked about it was really important.

[00:25:20] Marco Erickson: Well, and that’s one of our big campaigns. Every time we interact with parents, we’re trying to say, Listen, don’t stop talking to your kids about these issues.  Now, fentanyl is huge. We’re trying to we’ve got to make sure every kid and every family knows you should not be taking pills from the street. It’s not safe. Even if you order them online, not safe right now. You got to educate people, because those of us are in the field. We live that every day. And we go to all these trainings, but the general public. You can the kids train when they’re young into the schools be accredited. And the sad part is that takes money. And that means that people that are in lawmaking positions need to really prioritize that. Because if you don’t, and that’s what I’m trying to tell them is, you’re not prioritizing monetizing the work in prevention, you’re going to be paying for it in prison systems, and with education in a much bigger way. Because the schools are going to be overwhelmed. School Resource Officers, Law Enforcement, you’re going to have a mental health and have increased medical care costs. On the flip side, so being able to have vision, see long term paths, your little two year election cycle or four year election cycle. You got to be able to have that long term vision to really make that impact. So that’s what I’m trying. That’s a message I think legislatively we need to continue to push across America. And then they’re going to see, because we’ve done a lot of research that when Canada does research, our local states have done research. Every time we’re doing evidence-based projects, we’re seeing return on investment, sometimes $50 on some interventions. And even if it was the lowest, the lowest I’ve seen in my state was 14. But even let’s say I took half of that and it was 7%, I would still as an investor want to get 7% rate of return, you know $7 for every dollar I play, and that’s a pretty good.

“Unlocking the Power of Prevention: Marco’s Insights on Return on Investment and Community Impact”

[00:27:28] Jake White: That’s incredible. Do you have to be a math genius to calculate the return on investment for that, or could anyone do that?

[00:27:35] Marco Erickson: It’s always fascinating to me how these communities and they put these research projects for it, how they measure that, there’s geniuses. Those math geniuses, they figure out how you calculate loss of wages, because people are staying home costs to the businesses, when you’ve got serious mental health problems related to substance abuse. They’re looking at car crash data, they’re looking at highway debt tolls, they’re looking at hospitalizations, and law enforcement. And so when you calculate that you’re calculating this giant algorithm, I don’t know what all goes into it. But I know that when you really slowly calculate the impact, you can see that there’s a major return on investment. And I worked at treatment for years, I served families one to one as a provider, and I’d be in their homes, and I’d been community, and sometimes they were in the clinic when they were doing medication management and therapy and all these services. And it was great to have an impact on that one to one level. But the cost is much more significant than when we’re doing these large community wide preventive out of events and projects, working with kids in a group saying making a difference. And they’re doing it peer to peer and doing assemblies, all the different strategies that we have, not just one or two, we’re mixing them all together. And that’s what really makes a big impact long term, and it saves a lot of money.

[00:29:08] Jake White: I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode so far. Marco has so much to share, and 30 years of knowledge. So I actually wanted to break this up into two episodes. So I will see you next week for part two. And again, if you found this helpful, please send this to somebody who’s in our field. Don’t keep this a secret. Let other people know about this resource. Because I think together we’re able to share more, do more and learn more, because lives are at stake. These students are facing a lot of challenges either at home or in our communities. And the information that we have to share could be life-saving. So for anybody who’s new in this field, please know that we’re here for you. We’re able to support you. And if this has been a helpful resource for you, it could be helpful to someone. So make sure to subscribe so you’re getting alerted every Monday, and you can listen on your way to work and share with a friend. We’ll see you next week for that second part of this episode of Party Talk.