Manatee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition awarded $125,000 to combat youth drug abuse

MANATEE -- The White House Drug Policy Office announced $86 million in funding to local community coalitions to prevent youth substance use, and Manatee County is getting a $125,000 slice.

The grant is actually a 10-year grant that the Manatee County Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition has received for seven years already. The original grant allowed the county to start the coalition, and $125,000 covers about a third of the group's annual budget.

The coalition mainly uses data they collect throughout the county to identify substance abuse problems and how to combat them using education and prevention. Sharon Kramer, executive director of the coalition, said these funds will mean they're able to continue serving the community in that way.

"It's to bring the community together to solve these issues. And it's data-driven -- we collect volumes of data -- and that drives us," Kramer said. "What makes the coalition unique is we don't work one-on-one with people. Our goal is the whole community, so environmental strategies."

When the group first started in 2009, the main issue was alcohol, Kramer said. Of Manatee County students in 2008, 32.4 percent said they had drank alcohol in the past 30 days, and 19.2 percent admitted to binge drinking. In 2012, 21.4 percent admitted to having any alcohol in the past 30 days, and 11.2 percent said they had been binge drinking.

The coalition is now focusing more on prescription

drugs, opioids, marijuana and tobacco use, specifically electronic cigarettes. Alcohol use has continued to decrease, but marijuana and other drug use increased between 2012 and 2014 among high schoolers in Manatee County. Marijuana use among Manatee high school students increased from 14 percent to 16.2 percent, and use of other drugs increased from 5.3 percent to 7 percent.

Rita Chamberlain, associate director of the coalition, said medical marijuana movements likely contributed to increased use of marijuana, because students became more convinced that it was a safe drug.

"It's an industry, and this is how it works," Chamberlain said. "There's big pharma, there's big tobacco and now there's big marijuana. Wait and see."

The latest issue the coalition has started to zero in on is e-cigarettes, also known as vape pens or vaporizers, Jessica Spencer, project director, said most people are misinformed about the product, which still has health hazards despite companies marketing otherwise.

"They're being marketed as a way to quit tobacco," Spencer said. "But they're produced by the tobacco industry."

The prescription drug problem has decreased significantly in the county, as it did across the state. Chamberlain said at the height of the so-called pill mill epidemic in 2009, when pain management clinics would prescribe strong painkillers to those who didn't really need it, there were 27 pain management clinics in the county. That number quickly dropped during the crackdown to 21 clinics, and now the county has eight, all of which are subject to strict reporting standards and communicate with the coalition frequently, she said.

Coalition members convened the Opioid Task Force to deal with the heroin and opioid epidemic in the county, but that has operated as a joint community effort, where it is less limited by state regulations, rather than under the direct umbrella of the coalition.

Education and services

Mainly, coalition efforts are about education and making certain services available to the public. Education efforts include public service announcements warning parents about the penalties of hosting parties with underage alcohol, a Know the Law class conducted by school resource officers in schools and community festival trainings. Services include ID scanners for festival hosts serving alcohol, the Your Life Matters cards given to addicts who overdose with numbers to call, the veterans court program and prescription drug disposal sites.

The coalition is also starting an Emerging Issues Task Force, which will identify drug issues that could come to the county, such as flakka, and how that can be prevented. They already have an Alcohol Task Force and a Prescription Drug Task Force.

And more than anything, Kramer said the group wants anyone with ideas on how to combat substance abuse issues to come to them. It's a "community coalition," Kramer emphasized.

"We know that evidence-based prevention efforts are the most effective way to reduce youth substance use and to support the roughly 90 percent of American youth who do not use drugs," said Michael Botticelli, director of National Drug Control Policy, which awarded the grant. "By bringing together schools, businesses, law enforcement, parent groups, and other members of the community, DFC-funded community coalitions are helping to protect youth from the devastating consequences of non-medical prescription drug use, heroin and other substance use."

Kate Irby, Herald online/political reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7055. You can follow her on Twitter @KateIrby

This story was originally published September 9, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Manatee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition awarded $125,000 to combat youth drug abuse ."