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The grant — one of only 60 awarded to community coalitions nationwide — aims at preventing and reducing substance abuse among youth 18 and younger. It provides $125,000 per year for five years through the Drug Free Communities Support …
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A $625,000 federal grant awarded recently to the Park County Coalition Against Substance Abuse is good news for Park County youth and for Park County in general.
The grant — one of only 60 awarded to community coalitions nationwide — aims at preventing and reducing substance abuse among youth 18 and younger. It provides $125,000 per year for five years through the Drug Free Communities Support Program.
To qualify, the coalition was required to focus prevention efforts on two specific types of substance abuse.
For the first, coalition members chose to fight alcohol abuse, a long-standing substance abuse problem among youth in Park County. The coalition’s other prevention effort aims at a newer, but increasing, substance abuse problem: prescription drug abuse.
Besides being a “gateway” drug that often leads to abuse of additional substances, alcohol abuse in youth can result in lifelong problems with alcoholism, and all too frequently is the cause of tragic accidents and needless highway deaths involving teenagers.
Initial grant-funded work entails strengthening the coalition by partnering with schools, organizations, groups and individuals who work with and/or are concerned about youth in Park County and their welfare.
Work then will expand to identify prevention goals and strategies to achieve them. In the case of prescription drug abuse, the first step will be to quantify the problem.
We know prescription drug abuse exists, and we know it is increasing, but we don’t know how extensive the problem is, and we don’t know how it is perceived among youth in the county. Identifying and quantifying the problem will provide solid information on which to base prevention efforts as well as a starting point for tracking the results of those efforts.
We congratulate the Park County Coalition Against Substance Abuse on applying for and receiving the grant, and for its willingness to take action to prevent substance abuse in youth. Those prevention efforts will help Park County youth by preventing tragedies and lifelong hardships created so often by substance abuse, and by doing so, will benefit Park County as a whole as well.
