Drug prevention money welcome

May 15, 2008 09:50 pm

— It’s good to see Muskogee included among 10 communities selected for drug prevention.
The Cherokee Nation received an $11 million grant over five years to reduce drug abuse in eastern Oklahoma. While most of Muskogee is not within the nation, the Cherokees will be able to make use of some of the funds here.
Muskogee definitely has a need for drug prevention. We read and hear about drug busts and arrests almost daily.
So whatever funds the Cherokee Nation decides to use here will be welcome.
The program, which is funded through the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. involves building community coalitions. The coalitions assess their local drug problems and employ “evidence-based prevention strategies” to battle those problems.
We also hope that the strategies are success-based, although that is difficult to quantify. It’s next to impossible to determine the number of people who did not start using illegal drugs that might have were it not for a particular prevention program. The uncertainty is one reason prevention programs come and go.
DARE was a popular drug prevention program at one time, one employed here in Muskogee public schools, but its effectiveness has often been questioned.
Surely, the best drug program a community can employ is one that includes a mix of prevention, law enforcement and treatment programs.
Unfortunately, Oklahoma lacks treatment.
According to a 2005 study, about 86,000 people in the state use illicit drugs, and 82,000 Oklahomans who needed drug rehab services did not receive them for one reason or another.
Any addiction is tough to beat, and drug abuse is especially difficult to address, requiring special care and treatment.
But it’s also true an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and if our community can prevent young people from getting involved in drugs, we save ourselves and them a lot of heartache.