Council on substance abuse and youth drug-free communities

The coalition's goal is to establish and strengthen community collaboration in support of local efforts to prevent substance abuse. - the council on substance abuse and youth (CSAY) has applied for a fiscal year 2020 drug-free communities support program grant in the amount of $125,000, for the mount pleasant area. The coalition serves mount pleasant, pennsylvania, a community of 17,374. The mount pleasant area school district encompasses approximately 106 square miles and includes mount pleasant borough, mount pleasant township, donegal borough and donegal township. As a whole, the school district is considered largely suburban, with a residential population of 17,374. Furthermore, the district has an enrollment of approximately 2,066 students. The median age in this community is 46.1 years and 9.9% of the residents live in poverty, a rate comparable to the county rate of 10.3%. However, within mount pleasant borough, the poverty rate rises to 12.9%, which is slightly above the national poverty rate of 12.3%. The racial makeup of the community is 97.9% white or caucasian, 1.0% from two or more races, 0.6% asian, and 0.4% black or african american. Underage drinking has been a consistent, ongoing problem for the mount pleasant area, due to the rural locations that are easily accessible. The drug free communities years 1-5 grant focused on underage drinking and prescription drug abuse. CSAY worked diligently to address these two substances and is now seeing a shift to a substantial problem of marijuana use by the youth of the MT. Pleasant community. A county-wide needs assessment was conducted and through focus groups and survey data, IT has been discovered that the legalization of medical marijuana, as well as talk of legalizing recreational marijuana, have increased use among youth. Parental approval of marijuana use among youth has also increased. CSAY has actively been working on building capacity by sharing its needs assessment information with key stakeholders and working on a nine-month action plan. The first five years enabled CSAY to take advantage of the tech nical assistance and ramp up coalition activities, with strong youth participation. CSAY has made great strides and established partnerships in the community. In order to continue to address factors that increase the risk of youth substance use and change the culture and context within which decisions about substance use are made, the continuation of drug free communities years 6-10 is essential. IT would allow CSAY to enhance coalition membership, as well as increase activities that would address underage drinking and marijuana use among youth age 18 and younger. CSAY wants to keep growing youth involvement through the school and to support them in their peer to peer prevention efforts, as well as having the youth work with the coalition?S community outreach to reduce substance use among youth.