MISSOULA OFFERS LESSONS IN HOW TO FIGHT DRUGS

In the weeks since Gen. Barry McCaffrey visited this city and focused
public attention on Montana's drug problems, Billings people who want
to do something more about the methamphetamine epidemic have turned
out by the dozens at two community meetings. How will this energy be
turned into action?

McCaffrey, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, didn't come out here to announce that the federal government
planned to give Montana additional money or beef up drug enforcement
staffing. Instead, he told state and local leaders that communities
have to solve their own drug problems.

However, there are a multitude of grants available to help communities
jump-start drug prevention programs. The catch is that Congress has
said federal anti-drug grants can only be used for projects that prove
their effectiveness. When the Billings Healthy Communities Coalition,
a group comprised of representatives from a wide range of local health
organizations, was awarded a drug prevention grant recently, it was to
fund programs that have been researched by other communities and found
to be successful in reducing youth involvement with risky behaviors,
such as use of alcohol and other drugs.

Billings has made a start on community collaboration to fight drugs,
but the numbers of methamphetamine addicts needing treatment, the
amount of local crime caused by the drug trade and the number of
children placed in foster care because of parental drug addiction
demand that we do more.

That will mean finding "best practices" that have worked elsewhere and
are appropriate for this community.

Billings leaders don't have to look any farther than Western Montana
for an example of what community collaboration can achieve in the
fight against drugs.

A grant of $2.5 million to be used over three years, starting this
school year, is boosting drug prevention efforts in Missoula County
Public Schools. It took Missoula County planners, educators and other
community members just about six weeks to pull together this
successful grant application, according to Peggy Seel, a human
services grants writer for the Missoula County Office of Planning and
Grants. But community members have amassed information and built
coalitions for collaboration over the past several years. That
groundwork allowed the community members to move quickly when this
funding from the departments of Justice, Education and Health and
Human Services became available. Seel is one of three Missoula County
employees whose job is writing human service grants.

Large grants require a collaborative effort, Seel said. A coalition of
organizations has a much better prospect of success than a single
agency bidding for funding. Many people worked on this grant proposal.
It was completed in a short time frame with the help a facilitator
hired by the school district and district court, Seel said.

The project will help Missoula children, ages preschool through high
school, and their families to prevent violence and drug use. Part of
the $2.5 million will fund police officers in middle schools and high
schools and support safety measures in schools. It will provide a
full-time mental health worker in each high school and each middle
school. Elementary schools will have a half-time mental health
professional. The grant also will increase the number of family
resource centers in schools.

This Missoula drug prevention effort began four years ago with one
grant for a program in one middle school that was determined to be
most in need, according to Peg Shea, director of Turning Point, a
chemical dependency treatment program of the Western Montana Mental
Health Center. Now the project, funded from various sources and
grants, has 10 employees in the schools plus a Vista volunteer.

Another grant, under the federal Drug-Free Communities program,
includes money to pay for a half-time coordinator for the "The Forum,"
a Missoula community coalition working on improving services to youth.

Shea said the youth prevention effort also has received an allocation
of county alcohol tax revenues, state block grants from the federal
government. A request to local government for gambling tax revenue was
turned down, but the group will ask again, she said.

Shea said the Missoula superintendent of schools is actively involved
in the project, as are principals at schools where the prevention
programs are offered.

"It's a lot of work, but when I go in and out of schools and see what
our youth development workers are doing, it's worth it," Shea said.