DRUG, BOOZE PREVENTION FOR YOUTHS UNDERFUNDED

Audit Shows Colorado Spends Four Times More On Adults Than Teens

The club drug Ecstasy is grabbing headlines, but state officials who
oversee treatment and prevention programs say alcohol and marijuana
take the biggest toll on Colorado's youth.

And their efforts are being hampered by a fragmented system that
underfunds programs for teens, according to a state audit released
Tuesday. "This is the same problem we face year after year after
year," said Sen. Norma Anderson, R-Lakewood. "How do we fund it?"

No one doubts there's a problem. In a survey last year of 16,000
Colorado middle and high school students, state researchers found
that 60 percent of 12th-graders, 50 percent of 10th-graders and 32
percent of eighth-graders had used alcohol in the days leading up to
the survey.

However, using calculations based on the more than 141,000 adults and
juveniles served by the state's prevention programs, auditors
concluded $21 was spent per youth on direct prevention services and
$80 per adult. By comparing spending on adults and juveniles for
programs that help clients recover from an addiction or stay sober,
auditors found that the state spends four times more on adults than
teens for prevention and three times more on treatment for adults.
"You want to get these kids before they start down a long, bad road,"
said Sen. Ron Tupa, D-Boulder.

But state officials who oversee the programs, and state auditors,
found that in many cases federal strings attached to the treatment
and prevention money coming to Colorado make it impossible for state
workers to decide how the money could be best spent. "The federal
funds dictate the priorities, and juveniles are not the priority,"
said George Kawamura, manager of the office of Adult Health and
Rehabilitation services in the Colorado Department of Human Services.
Auditors also found that prevention and treatment programs are being
conducted by eight state agencies. In some cases, those programs
aren't tracking how many teens are being served and how well the
programs are working. Lawmakers, with the support of Gov. Bill Owens,
approved a measure last year to consolidate the state services into a
newly created division in the Colorado Department of Public Health
and Environment. That new division is still getting organized and
hasn't been operating for a full year. But legislators are hopeful
their plans to bring all the teen programs under one umbrella will
yield results.

"What we've done in the past is put a little bit here and a little
bit there. We haven't put enough in any one place to do any good,"
Anderson said. "Are we getting results for our dollars? We don't
always know. And we ought to know."