The communities of Morgan Hill and San Martin recently received
a $200,000 windfall to help combat substance abuse in the area.
The communities of Morgan Hill and San Martin recently received a $200,000 windfall to help combat substance abuse in the area.
The three-year grant provides $75,000 the first two years and $50,000 in the final year to the Morgan Hill/San Martin Community Substance Abuse Prevention Partnership. The money will be used to hire a coordinator for the program, according to Dina Campeau, an organizer in the partnership. The group also hopes to keep the program running with fundraisers after the grant expires. Another grant may also be secured as a source of funding.
“We want to create an environment where a recovering addict will feel safe and supported, as well as an environment that will prevent others from becoming addicts,” Campeau said.
Campeau said the partnership plans to focus on the younger generation initially. Teaching kids the dangers of substance abuse, health professionals agree, should begin early and continue over the years to reinforce what they have learned.
Efforts to create awareness have resulted in a national program, Red Ribbon Week, in October, when public and private schools alike focus on making substance abuse prevention a part of the curriculum. But the Morgan Hill/San Martin Community Substance Abuse Prevention Partnership hopes to bring a more sustained effort to the community.
In the first year of the grant, the partnership has several goals: complete an assessment of community needs and resources and create an evaluation plan, create a work plan, budget and budget narrative, as well as a sustainability plan.
The partnership hopes to reduce youth drinking by 50 percent by 2007, to increase community assets by 20 percent and reduce the proliferation of meth labs in the Morgan Hill/San Martin area by 50 percent.
Other aims of the grant include changing the perception of the community about substance abuse, which Campeau said particularly would help the community’s youth.
“If the perception is there that alcohol abuse and marijuana use are not as dangerous as tobacco use, then we can see the success of the focus on tobacco, and need to now put that same energy into alcohol and drugs,” she said.
The California Healthy Kids Survey, one of the resources Campeau said was used to create the grant application, is taken by seventh-graders, freshman and juniors in the school district every two years. The results of the 2003 survey, Campeau said, are disturbing. More than half of Live Oak High juniors surveyed believed that alcohol and marijuana are very easy to obtain (54 percent alcohol and 56 percent marijuana); 60 percent of juniors believed that at least 80 percent of their peers have tried marijuana; and 41 percent of seventh graders reported riding with a driver who had been drinking (a higher percentage than the ninth graders or juniors, likely attributed to parents or guardians drinking), according to the survey.
The “kids will be kids” attitude that teenage drinking is “no big deal” was illustrated this year, Campeau said, by an incident the night of the Live Oak High junior prom. The report of a teenager falling from a third-floor balcony of a hotel in Monterey during an after-prom party prompted letters from students and former students who said most students drink before, during or after the prom.
“It’s public perceptions like this, the environment our kids are growing up in” that the partnership is seeking to change, Campeau said.
The partnership is made up of and will work with a wide variety of community organizations already in place, including the Morgan Hill School District, the Morgan Hill Police Department, Catholic Charities, Kaiser Permanente, Community Solutions, MACSA, Downtown Business Association, Morgan Hill Pony Baseball, Morgan Hill Spirit Softball and the Migrant Collaborative.
Marilyn Dubil covers education and law enforcement for The Times. Reach her at (408) 779-4106 Ext. 202 or at md****@mo*************.com.
