 This is a member highlight for 21 Reasons and I'm here with its program manager, Joanne Morrissey, to talk about a community conversation that's coming up that you and the City of Portland are hosting. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it? Oh, I'd love to. Thank you, first of all, for having us on your show this evening. 21 Reasons, a community-based coalition whose mission is to have installed policies and practices within the city that promote the drug-free development of our youth. And on our coalition is the City of Portland's Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse Prevention. And we together are hosting a community forum on a conversation around marijuana and its effects on our youth. Now, will you be discussing the laws that are in place right now and the legislation that's going across the country and affecting different states? Or is it very local, what you're talking about, or how broad is this topic? That's a really good question, Tom. So what we really wanted to focus on is not necessarily a pro and con debate, but have an open and honest dialogue around the policies that are coming down the pipeline or that are happening in other states and some of the policies that have been put forth for us here in the state of Maine. And talk together about our mutual concerns about the safety and well-being of our friends and our youth. So since it's a community conversation, are you looking to represent on that panel a wide variety of points of view? We absolutely have invited panelists from all sides of this issue. On our panel will be Portland Police Chief Michael Soschuck, State Representative Diane Russell, as well as a Representative of Maine State, Sam Maine, Scott Gengongi, as well as the Graney Dunn from the ACLU and someone who can speak about the effects on youth in our community, unlike Freisinger from Youth Moves. Okay, great. And so this panel discussion, are people going to take turns speaking or will there be a moderator? How about that part of the evening go? Well, thank you. We are actually trying to bring this to a very sophisticated level. We have Shannon Moss as our moderator and she will be posing some questions that we are securing both from our panelists as well as our steering committee and our coalition members on what we want to bring to front and discuss on this very important and timely issue. Would you give us some examples of some of the questions that Shannon might be asking the panelists? What we really want to do is bring to for some of the conversation around the effects and the unintended consequences that this conversation has been having on our youth and what we can all do to come together to help promote our drug for youth. Now, who do you encourage to come and watch this panel discussion as a select group or is it totally open to the public and totally open to any sides? Absolutely. Well, this is considered a wide community conversation and we have invited people from all sectors. Hopefully what we will have is a wide representation in our audience from adults throughout our community, parents, guardians, youth, people who work with youth as well as concerned citizens participate in this conversation. Oh, to participate. So will they have an opportunity to ask questions and get feedback from the panelists? So we do have pre-questions that we've been researching out that we would like to bring to front but we are also having a forum where we can pose questions of the panelists and get our own answers and sort of explore this for ourselves. Now, just in case we've already talked about it but just to emphasize it, where, when, how. Absolutely. So we're having this community conversation at the Rhine's Auditorium on Wednesday evening, doors at six o'clock. Wednesday, that's March 19th and the panel discussion will start at 6.30 and we're hoping to wrap things up by 7.30 and hopefully and luckily, but for us it will be taped by CTN 5 and we can make copies of that video available and maybe even perhaps have it viewed on CTN 5. Of course, absolutely. It's if people want to get more information about this or anything else that you do, do you have a website you can refer them to? We do. Our website is www.21reasons.org. Okay, great. Well, good luck with the forum and thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me.