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Director's Corner
Kimberly A. Johnson, Director
What’s New – Summer 2005With growing concern about the epidemic problem of methamphetamine use across the country, the Maine State Legislature passed a bill on June 6, 2005, titled, “An Act to Prevent the Manufacturing of Methamphetamine in Maine,” which will place restrictions on over-the-counter decongestant cold medicines that can be used in the process of making the drug methamphetamine. As part of the language of the law, the Legislature has charged OSA to establish an educational program, based on the national effort known as “Meth Watch,” first begun in Kansas. The Meth Watch program will serve to educate retailers, retail employees and the public in order to help curtail suspicious sales and the theft of products commonly used to manufacture methamphetamine. Meth Watch is a voluntary program that involves many people at the community and state level, including law enforcement, state and local public officials, the national guard, community activists, and drug prevention personnel. The Meth Watch program will give Maine’s communities proven and powerful tools to curb methamphetamine production before it reaches epidemic proportions here. Training will begin this fall and we hope to have widespread use of the Meth Watch program by next summer. I am pleased to announce that Bill Lowenstein, Associate Director of OSA, was recently elected president of the National Prevention Network (NPN), which includes state agency substance abuse prevention leaders from across the country. This position also serves as Vice-President of Prevention on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors. The role of the President is to provide leadership and direction, and to serve as the spokesperson for the field of substance abuse prevention. Bill has been Maine’s representative in the NPN for the past eight years, and has been chairperson of the NPN Research Committee for the past six years. He has worked in the field of substance abuse for the last twenty years, and has provided training and technical assistance regarding tobacco, alcohol and other drug issues locally, regionally, and nationally. We awarded the first of the SPF SIG funds to six organizations to assess the substance abuse prevention needs of different cultural subpopulations that may be at risk in Maine. Considering Maine’s population is predominantly white, this project will break new epidemiological ground by documenting substance abuse risk in small, but definable cultural communities who may suffer health disparities. The proposal for this project was developed collaboratively with state partners who are currently part of the Strategies for Healthy Youth Workgroup (Healthy Maine Partnerships, Coordinated School Health Program, Community Health Promotion, Communities for Children and Youth, Maine Children’s Trust, Juvenile Justice and the Office of Substance Abuse). The information gathered will be used by prevention programs and coalitions across the state to develop services that more effectively meet the unique needs of each group. The six organizations and the populations they will assess are as follows:
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has been awarded a state incentive grant for treatment of persons with Co-Occurring Substance Related and Mental Disorders (COSIG) from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. This award will provide DHHS with approximately $3.48 million over the next five years as part of the broader effort to build treatment capacity statewide for those who experience co-occurring substance abuse and mental disorders. Through this project, we will test system changes and infrastructure enhancements to determine what programs and services are most effective for Native Americans, migrant workers and immigrants from Asia and Africa as well as the population in general. The project will help people to understand whether interventions are consistently effective in different treatment settings serving diverse ethnic and cultural populations and help us determine the best way to deliver those services. The Driver Education and Evaluation Program (DEEP) has been cited in a recent publication of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration titled Evaluation of Lower BAC Limits for Convicted OUI Offenders in Maine. The objective of the research was to determine the effectiveness of establishing lower blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits for individuals convicted of Operating Under the Influence (OUI) in one state. The research concluded that, when included in a State’s arsenal of OUI countermeasures, a lower BAC law can be effective in reducing fatal crashes involving convicted OUI offenders, and that such a law can be enacted and implemented with essentially no negative effects on a State’s OUI control system. Each year, the Maine Youth Empowerment and Policy (YEP) group, a youth group that was formed to study policy questions regarding substance abuse and Maine’s youth, selects a topic that they feel significantly affects Maine youth and requires a youth perspective. For 2005, the YEP group decided to bring alcohol advertising to the forefront in the hope that communities start to consider youth consumption of alcohol as a serious problem. According to their new report - Alcohol Advertising and Underage Drinking: A Youth Perspective (pdf) – more than two-thirds of the nearly 500 youth surveyed across Maine support YEP’s hypothesis that alcohol advertising appeals to underage individuals. Moreover, the survey results indicate that alcohol advertising encourages underage individuals to drink, resulting in legal, social and health problems for Maine youth. To read the full text of this report and previous reports developed by the YEP group, visit www.neias.org/YEP/. Thank you for visiting our website. Please email us at osa.ircosa@maine.gov if you need assistance accessing any information. We are here to make Maine a healthier and safer place. Previous Updates |
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Director's Update