CRIME PREVENTION GRANT TO FUND DRUG ABUSE STUDY

The Brockville area is one of the first places in Canada to get a national
crime prevention grant to find out how many people are abusing drugs and
alcohol and how to fight it.

The Safe Community Coalition of Brockville and District's $20,000 grant
through the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse is aimed at creating a plan
based on solid research.

"We want to be part of it," coalition co-chairman Ruth Kitson said. "We
want to pull the data together with the hospitals, the coroner, the OPP.
When we know what the issues really are in the Brockville and Leeds and
Grenville area, we will put together an action plan.

"We knew it was something we should be looking at."

The Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use is a project of the
federal and provincial government and local agencies.

Windsor, Whitehorse, Prince Edward Island, Moose Factory First Nation on
James Bay and Mount Currie First Nation in B.C. also received grants.

"They wanted a cross-section of communities across Canada," Kitson said.
"Is alcohol and drug abuse more prevalent in the rural areas? In the big
cities? That's what we don't have right now."

Project co-ordinator Fay Garvin, with the help of a new committee, will
pull together existing information about drug and alcohol use and abuse.
She'll find out how many people are using, how many are having brushes with
the law, how many are dying or being treated in hospital, and how many have
contracted HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.

She'll also find out what treatment is available.

The report, expected next summer, will let the coalition and its 85 member
groups know how much drug and alcohol abuse is happening here and measure
the health, crime and other social costs.

That means people fighting drug use will have facts - not assumptions - on
which to base action, Kitson said. They'll come up with potential actions,
decide who will carry them out and when, and anticipate the results.