Ashley Duchesne and Tia Stone wanted to drive home a point.

“With drug use, we felt that we just needed to get the message across that this was not a good path,” Duchesne said Friday afternoon.

The hard-hitting posters she and Stone conceived and designed say as much.

“The relationship I have with drugs has sucked the life out of me,” one reads. It features a young man lying prostrate and comatose on asphalt.

Another banner states: “The relationship I have with drugs has been slowly drifting apart.”

It depicts a young woman breathing through an oxygen mask, her scalp peeling and fracturing like cracked paint into the background.

“I think this is something that can really say something to people around our age,” Stone said.

The posters, created at the Youth of Today Society on Jeckell Street, are part of a campaign bolstered by a recent cash injection from the federal government.

Yukon MP Ryan Leef announced at the NGO Friday afternoon that $309,000 in funding from Health Canada will funnel through the society over three years as part of an effort to prevent illicit drug use among at-risk youth in the Yukon.

The money falls under Ottawa’s National Anti-Drug Strategy, one piece of a broader funding pie that amounts to $16.1 million for nearly three dozen drug prevention initiatives this year.

Victoria Durrant, who heads Youth of Today, noted how Duschesne’s and Stone’s posters conceive of drug abuse issues as a kind of unhealthy relationship.

“It is a relationship, and it’s one that can be abusive and one that can lead you places where don’t want to go,” Durrant said in the 15-year-old organization’s living room.

“Our young people have come up with a creative way, a direct way to just say: watch out.”

The awareness campaign may branch out in the future to include more literature as well as discussion groups and even policy suggestions.

Durrant asked Leef on the spot if he would confront the territorial government on further attention and funding for issues facing at-risk youth, including substance abuse, domestic violence and homelessness.

Leef, deferring any long-term commitments, made the announcement on behalf of Health Minister Rona Ambrose.

“The Government of Canada supports drug prevention programs that are focused on ending drug use,” Ambrose said in a release.

“The funding announced today will support many communities across the country in improving the quality of prevention services and reducing drug use among youth.

“It will also provide needed information to those most affected by drug use, including parents, young people, educators, law enforcement authorities and communities.”

The federal Drug Strategy Community Initiatives Fund focuses on supporting health promotion projects that target young people under 25 “who have a higher risk of developing substance abuse and dependency,” the release states.

The National Anti-Drug Strategy, meanwhile, looks at prevention and access to treatment for those with “drug dependencies.”

It also feeds into the Conservative tough-on-crime stance by “combating the production and distribution of illicit drugs that threaten the safety of our youth and communities.”