COULD HIGHER TAXES LEAD TO FEWER ADDICTS?

HELENA - Voters will get a chance to tax themselves to pay for drug and
alcohol prevention programs for local kids, if a bill unveiled Thursday
becomes law.

Rep. Rosie Buzzas, D-Missoula, pitched her House Bill 73 Thursday to the
House Local Government Committee. The bill would let counties, cities and
towns put an optional property tax mill levy on the ballot that would raise
money for substance abuse-prevention programs. Local governments could not
enact the levy, which would raise money by taxing a percentage of one's
property value, unless a majority of voters agreed.

Buzzas told the committee that Montana consistently ranks among the top of
states with the highest number of teenagers and kids using alcohol and
drugs. The state spends hundreds of millions of dollars dealing with the
aftermath of drug and alcohol abuse, but very little on scientifically
proven prevention programs.

In 1998, she said, quoting from a Martz administration study, 15 percent of
all the tax money spent in Montana went to clean up after drug and alcohol
abuse in some way.

"There's economic impacts," she said, adding that by spending money on
prevention, the state could save money in the long run.

Right now, most alcohol- and drug-abuse prevention programs are temporary
and paid for with "piecemeal" federal grants. Successful prevention
programs need stable funding, Buzzas said. An optional mill levy would let
voters decide if they want to pony up such dollars.

Jackie Jandt, the planning outcome officer for the Addictive and Mental
Disorders Division of the state's health department, said that prevention
programs have come a long way in the last 20 years. They're now grounded in
science, not talk, she said, and are studied the same way heart disease
prevention programs are studied.

She said science also knows a lot more about the physiological impacts of
teen and childhood drug and alcohol use.

"Studies now show that there's a second brain growth spurt," she said,
similar to the rapid brain development that occurs between birth and five
years. This second brain growth starts around age 12 and can last into
one's early 20s. But if early and late teens abuse drugs and alcohol in
that time, it can lead to lifelong learning and memory problems.

Several studies have shown that early teens who use drugs and alcohol only
moderately substantially reduce their math, reading and writing test
scores, Jandt said.

No one spoke against the bill.

Rep. Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, asked Jandt why drug- and
alcohol-prevention programs today would work any better than those of the
past that never seemed to do anything.

Jandt said successful programs have to include kids, their parents, school
and the community.

In an interview after the meeting, Jandt said several communities in
Montana are successfully cutting down on teen drug use through programs
that involve kids and parents taking classes on how to be a healthy family.

"They provide skills for all situations," she said. "When you're a parent,
you don't just parent for specific things.

But she said the typically short lifespan of grant-funded prevention
programs leads to a certain cynicism in the public.