MCPC - Macomb County Prevention Coalition, drug-free schools, ken lampar, macomb, michigan

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Two groups unite to fight drugs
Coalition will try to lower high number of teen-agers smoking, drinking, using pot

By Nathan Collins / The Detroit News

MT. CLEMENS -- Two county groups have formed a coalition to keep young people from so-called gateway drugs that later lead to experimentation and use of harder substances.

The Macomb Zero Tolerance Coalition and the Drug-Free Schools Consortium have created the Macomb County Prevention Coalition, which unites education, law enforcement and community leaders in the fight against teen drug use.

"It became clear that what the schools wanted to do was to reach out to the community and the community couldn't do its job without the schools," said Patti Steele, coalition co-chairwoman.

" ... We needed to approach families and youth together, and not separate as we have been doing."

In a survey given by the Macomb Intermediate School District to 12th-graders in 1997, two-thirds of those students said they had used alcohol within a month of the survey -- higher than the national average of 53 percent for alcohol usage among teens, said Ken Lampar, another coalition leader and former director of the Macomb Zero Tolerance Coalition.

About 44 percent said they had smoked cigarettes, while another 34 percent of the 12th-graders said they had used marijuana the month prior to the survey. The national averages for 12th-graders that year was 37 percent for cigarette use and 24 percent for marijuana.

Results of a 1999 survey of Macomb 12th-graders will be released next month.

Alcohol, tobacco and marijuana are considered gateway drugs because they tend to be used first by young people and often lead to harder drugs, like cocaine and heroin, Lampar said.

"The younger they use it -- and the more often they use it -- chances are they will then experiment with others," he said.

The Macomb Zero Tolerance Coalition is under direction of the Macomb Prosecutor's Office, while the Drug-Free Schools Consortium is run by the Macomb Intermediate School District.

"We're looking forward to working with the intermediate school district and preventing kids from using drugs," Lampar said.

Both groups receive money from different federal grants. They cannot combine their financial resources, but the groups will be able to fund different parts of large county-wide projects, Steele said.

Several projects already have been initiated by the coalition within the community. Workshops also are being set up to instruct teachers and counselors how to detect drug use among teen-agers and how to handle
conflict resolution.

The coalition plans a dinner in September to pick students to direct anti-drug commercials for public cable access channels.