Buried in Substance Abuse

Well, the big Campbell County Substance Abuse Initiative is finally underway. Stats on the county's alcohol and drug problem have been gathered and the process of trying to figure out what they mean has begun.

I'm pretty excited about this. Communities in Wyoming have assembled groups to address underage drinking or meth, but no one has done a comprehensive plan to go after EVERYTHING. As long as I have been thinking about this and advocating for this, I have a ton of thoughts in the back of my head. I have every intent of having my paws all over this plan and what it looks like.

I gathered some interesting stats to prove the importance of attacking these problems when kids are young. The whole idea of prevention is to identify at-risk youth and to keep them from going down the road of using drugs or alcohol.

Of those convicted of felonies in Gillette last year who were addicted to drugs or alcohol, 2/3 of them never graduated from high school. That number is shocking. What is worse is the next stat. Of those felons with substance abuse problems, 3/4 of them were subjected to abuse in the home (parents used drugs or offender was a victim of physical, sexual, verbal abuse).

Everything boils down to society taking care of our kids, something we are failing to do...