Area anti-drug group wins $625,000 federal grant

A local anti-drug organization has been awarded $625,000 in federal grant money to fund education and drug-prevention programs for area youths.

Early Prevention Impacts Community (EPIC) is a not-for-profit community coalition selected to receive the money through the federal Drug Free Communities program. Project director Mercedes Fort said the money is, in a way, an extension of a grant the group previously has been awarded.

"We've had a Drug Free Communities grant in Cape Girardeau for the past five years," she said. "In January of 2015, a new request for applications was released. ... For three months, we applied for the grant. It's a very lengthy and complicated process, and you don't hear back for a long time."

But when EPIC heard back, its officials were pleased to learn they had been chosen again.

Although a few other organizations around Missouri are Drug Free Communities grant recipients, EPIC was the only new awardee in the state in 2015.

"You wait, and you keep your fingers crossed," Fort said, "but we're really pleased that all that hard work paid off."

The $625,000 amount is the maximum grant possible.

Fort said the money will allow EPIC to maintain one full-time employee and a handful of part-time employees. Since 2009, EPIC has organized media campaigns and youth events to combat drug and alcohol use.

"This money keeps us working in the communities, working to make our community where kids don't get into drugs in the first place," Fort said.

EPIC is responsible for the permanent prescription drug drop-boxes in the Cape Girardeau and Jackson police department headquarters, and holds quarterly "Breakthrough Breakfast" educational presentations.

Fort said these are important steps to preventing the spread of what has become a nationwide heroin epidemic, often fueled by misuse of prescription painkillers.

"Young people have told us that when they do abuse prescription drugs, most often the place they get them is in the home in the medicine cabinet," she said. "And the thing that people don't understand is that it crosses over all socioeconomic backgrounds."

She also said the problem in Cape Girardeau County hasn't been as bad as had been expected, based on drug-use statistics. Prescription drop-boxes, she said, which allow disposal of unused drugs, play a substantial role in keeping drugs away from teens, especially since Missouri's regulations regarding prescription drugs lag behind the rest of the country's.

"Missouri is currently the only state in the country that doesn't have a prescription-drug monitoring program," Fort said. "This makes us particularly vulnerable to individuals who might doctor shop or come in from other states because there's not a system to monitor that."

tgraef@semissourian.com

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