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OPINIONS
Anne McGee: Substance abuse affects everyone in a community
The problem of substance abuse defies simple classification.
It is an insidious social and public health issue that crosses age, gender, economic, social, racial, cultural, and other boundaries. With substance abuse, there is no cut-and-dried determination that a particular party is going to bear the cost; in fact we all pay for substance abuse whether we use substances or not.
Examples of how substance abuse affects you indirectly could include any or all of these:
A drunk kid scratches your car with a key because his drinking buddy dares him.
A drug addict breaks into your car so he can sell your iPod for money to buy drugs.
Your babysitter's friend helps herself to the bottle of Lortab in your medicine cabinet.
Your co-worker is absent or distracted on the job because he or she or a loved one has a substance abuse problem.
Your daughter comes home from college, pregnant, because she had unprotected sex with a guy she met in a bar after a few too many cocktails.
Your local community center can no longer afford after-school programs because tax dollars are being spent on the arrest, prosecution and incarceration of people with issues arising from drugs and alcohol.
Your apartment window is shot out by a drunk wielding a gun on the streets after spending a night in the bars.
Your elderly parent falls and breaks a hip because no one talked to him or her about the interaction between a new medication and the scotch on the rocks he or she has enjoyed every evening for the past 40 years.
No individual, community, agency, or organization can prevent substance abuse on its own.
As the result of the hard work of the West Virginia Partnership to Promote Community Well-Being, the governor's appointed substance abuse prevention and early intervention planning body, West Virginia now has a plan to address substance abuse.
The plan was introduced Nov. 16 at the Governor's Drug Summit in Charleston and was supported by champions from all three branches of government, as well as state and federal government officials. Our community was well represented during the summit. Sen. Evan Jenkins; Delegate Don Perdue; Robert Hansen, executive director of Prestera Center; and I were all invited to speak and share our perspectives.
The plan sets forth as guiding principles that local people solve local problems best and that people support what they help create. With that in mind, we have our work cut out for us.
Be part of the solution and join the Cabell County Substance Abuse Prevention Partnership in support of the Governor's Comprehensive Strategic Plan to Address Substance Abuse in West Virginia.
We cannot afford to ignore it.
Anne McGee is director of Cabell County Substance Abuse Prevention Partnership. She can be contacted at 304-523-8929 ext. 5 or via e-mail at anne.mcgee@unitedwayrivercities.org.
