COMMUNITIES MAY UNITE IN WAR ON DRUGS

Support Strong For Proposed Countywide Coalition

Waukesha - The struggle to keep Waukesha County kids away from drugs
could get a $100,000-a-year boost if educators, police and others
forge a new countywide coalition under consideration.

Known as Drug-Free Communities, the coalition would be modeled after
similar groups that have gotten federal funds to coordinate and
expand anti-drug-abuse efforts in Milwaukee and elsewhere.

Operators of the Milwaukee coalition have received $55,000 to help
their suburban counterparts analyze the program's potential for
reducing tobacco, alcohol and other drug use among Waukesha County children.

In some places, Drug-Free Communities has included such activities as
youth drug use surveys, town hall meetings and public policy initiatives.

Activists in Waukesha County expect to decide within a month or two
whether to launch a coalition and apply for federal funding.

"If it's going to succeed, it has to be led by the community," said
Marcia Jante, county executive director of the University of
Wisconsin Extension, a local outreach of the UW System.

"We have to have enough individuals - a critical mass - who are
willing to work as a collaborative," she said.

In addition to new programming ideas, the coalition would aim to
coordinate existing efforts so that individual programs complement
one another and information is shared among those working on
education, prevention and treatment of youths.

Jante and other advocates of the Drug-Free Communities approach have
been conducting focus groups since October to gauge support among
officials from area schools, police agencies, churches, hospitals and
elsewhere.

Although many participants recognize that Waukesha County already has
programs in place to discourage kids from drugs, support for the idea
of a new countywide strategy is strong.

"There's more than enough prevention work to go around," said Claudia
Roska, executive director of the Addiction Resource Council, a
Waukesha-based facility that began offering services nearly 40 years ago.

Ned Steuber, a drug treatment activist in Oconomowoc, said he
believes more after-school activities for young people would help
reduce drug use.

"There's certainly room for improvement," Steuber said, "because
there's a definite drug and alcohol problem with kids in Waukesha County."

Members of the Waukesha County Board today will consider authorizing
the UW Extension to pursue the coalition idea.

If approved, the UW outreach will continue holding focus groups and
conducting other research under the guidance of IMPACT Alcohol &
Other Drug Abuse Services Inc., which leads a Drug-Free Communities
coalition that began in Milwaukee County eight years ago.

It is among 700 such coalitions nationwide funded through the Office
of National Drug Control Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. Funding can total as much as $100,000 a year.

Duncan Shrout, an associate director of IMPACT, said the program has
strengthened Milwaukee County drug-abuse prevention, partly by
getting more people involved and distributing more information where needed.

Shrout said that while it is too soon to predict whether the concept
will take hold in Waukesha County, proponents have been encouraged by
a wide cross-section of community representatives who have attended
the focus groups.

"The very fact that people are in the same room moving in the same
direction is a benefit," he said. "There is a real benefit to unification."

IMPACT would not expand into Waukesha County but would simply help
suburban officials get their own program started.

Judging from research completed so far, Jante said, efforts to combat
youth drug use in Waukesha County are not addressing the problem fully.

"There are some real gaps in services," she said.

Pat Kashmerick, community outreach coordinator for Community Memorial
Hospital in Menomonee Falls, said such a coalition could help target
resources and build on existing strengths.

Despite advances in the war against drugs, Kashmerick noted, an
illicit laboratory was raided in Menomonee Falls less than two years ago.

"It doesn't hurt to have coalitions around these issues," she said.
"These issues aren't going away."