Cherokee County Commission On Alcohol And Drug Abuse

Cherokee County Commission On Alcohol And Drug Abuse, doing business as Acgency, is a U.S. local government entity (county-structure organization) based in Gaffney, South Carolina, that receives federal grant funding to operate substance use disorder treatment services and youth substance abuse prevention programs as a prime grant recipient (33% of recent awards) and sub-recipient (67% of recent awards) under the Department of Health and Human Services.

Acgency operates in Cherokee County, a rural Appalachian county of approximately 57,000 residents along the I-85 corridor between Charlotte and Atlanta, with a median household income of $35,836 and twenty percent of the population living below the poverty line. The organization's federal footprint centers on two distinct mission areas: youth substance abuse prevention through coalition work and adult treatment services delivery. On the prime grant side, Acgency is the recipient of a five-year Project Grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control awarded September 30, 2023 (ultimate completion September 29, 2028) to support the Creating A Safer Tomorrow (CAST) Coalition, focused on reducing youth access and use of alcohol and marijuana through evidence-based strategies and environmental change in the county.

The bulk of Acgency's federal revenue flows through sub-recipient agreements with the South Carolina Department of Alcohol & Other Drug Abuse Services, the prime grantee under multiple Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) awards. Acgency sub-receives funding to provide outpatient and intensive outpatient substance use disorder treatment services in its catchment area; sub-awards are dated July 1, 2023 (three separate sub-awards on that date), July 1, 2024, August 4, 2025 (treatment access and Medicaid gap-fill services), and September 22, 2025 (South Carolina State Opioid Response Project opioid and stimulant use disorder prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and recovery).

Activity is intermittent, with two awards in the 2015 grant cohort, four in 2023, one in 2024, and two in 2025, for a combined nine total awards obligating $2.9 million across all federal sources. All customer agencies are within the Department of Health and Human Services, concentrated in SAMHSA and CDC programming. Acgency competes in the federal grant environment as a rural public health grantee, not as a federal contractor on competitive procurements.