Funding Down, Task Up for Drug Free Marion Co.

Drug Free Marion County finds about 25 percent of Marion County eighth graders have used marijuana in the past month.

"This has, and continues to be in many cases, a sort of gateway drug for a lot of people, more so than alcohol these days or tobacco for that matter," said Executive Director Randy Miller.  "Marijuana use rates are higher than our tobacco use rates here, which is a little bit flipped on its head."

"Our rates are above Indiana rates, and well above national rates especially at the eighth grade level."

The organization distributes grants annually through fees collected by the court system from alcohol and drug offenders.

But, Miller says over the past few years, the amount available has dropped by 50 percent.

"That fund itself, since 2009-2010 has gone down from $450,000 to $300,000," said Miller.  "So a 50 percent drop in three, four years is the most that we've seen rather inexplicably.  We can't get a good handle on why the precipitous decrease."

He says the goal is to work with the courts to discuss possible changes to the fees that will bring in more for drug treatment efforts.

"We try and take advantage of opportunities that are kind of low cost and don't cost us a lot of money, cost us some time, but we do those as we can," said Miller.  "If we had some additional dollars to bring us some additional staff, it would help with the work or to provide our grantees with some funds to sort of augment or fill in the gaps that we can't as an organization, it would obviously be much better."

Photo courtesy DEA