A fight against substance abuse in S.C.

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The North Shore Coalition Against Substance Abuse has taken additional steps forward since its inaugural meeting on April 26. It has established committees that focus on the schools, community, parents and, most important, young people, and they have begun meeting monthly.

“The more people in the community that we get on the same page about this, the better off our children are going to be,” said Joanna Commander, a North Shore Schools Board of Education trustee and a liaison to CASA.

At the coalition’s board of directors meeting on June 14, Commander explained that the group re-established itself as a not-for-profit organization. While each committee is still in the process of prioritizing activities to combat substance abuse in the coming months, Commander said that parent-related programs have drawn a great deal of interest.

“I think that it’s critical to have informational programs for parents,” she said. “We’re hoping that if we have a huge success, this will really encourage more people to get involved in whatever efforts we go forward with.”

Commander added that holding training sessions at the schools on how to combat substance abuse would make people more aware of how it is trending. Board members also mentioned setting up a drug drop-off site with help from the Nassau County Police Department. And Commander said that despite the timing — the school year had ended when the coalition was formed — she was confident that the community would be committed to achieving its goals.

Sea Clff Mayor Ed Lieberman said he hoped the village board could play a role in revitalizing community youth programs like the coalition by encouraging residents to stay committed. It is “imperative,” he said, that the village support these community groups.

“As a village, we have to take a lead on coordinating with the schools and the auxiliary programs,” Lieberman said. “We have to show that the community is totally committed to our children and their future.”

Lieberman, who is also a criminal defense attorney, noted that he had several young clients who died as a result of substance abuse. When he was re-elected mayor in March, one of his goals was to establish a “line of communication” between the village board and its youth programs.

“We hope to do that through our liaison, so they can utilize any resources that we have or any personnel so that we can provide a better service,” he said.

Village Trustee Deborah McDermott was named the liaison for youth programs when she was elected to the board in March. “They appointed an executive board, and they are currently working on a not-for-profit status and looking at their bylaws,” she said of CASA at a village board meeting on Monday. “They’ve just been basically talking about the different pieces that they need to gauge what their best actions will be.”

McDermott added that the North Shore middle and high school student members of CASA have made suggestions about what they believe the organization should be focusing on, including: fear as motivation, providing parents with firsthand accounts of what is happening with alcohol and drug abuse, earlier drug education, better education for parents who condone the use of drugs and alcohol, and providing more information about teen mental heath issues.

Additionally, McDermott is trying to help the organization establish itself as a group not just for the schools, but also for the entire community, by offering potential meeting space in Village Hall.

Lieberman said that although this is the first community program he can recall that is taking on substance abuse, the best is yet to come. “We’re just scratching the surface with this right now,” he said. “I hope that in the long run this will not only benefit the village, but specifically the children that we hold so dear to our hearts.”

CASA’s board of directors held its most recent meeting on July 13, and devised operating procedures for each committee. Additionally, committee leaders are expected to fully establish exactly what they will be working on by the end of the summer.