Pubdate: Fri, 14 Jan 2005
Source: Billings Gazette, The (MT)
Copyright: 2005 The Billings Gazette
Contact:  http://www.billingsgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/515
Author: Jennifer McKee, Gazette State Bureau

COULD HIGHER TAXES LEAD TO FEWER ADDICTS?

HELENA - Voters will get a chance to tax themselves to pay for drug and 
alcohol prevention programs for local kids, if a bill unveiled Thursday 
becomes law.

Rep. Rosie Buzzas, D-Missoula, pitched her House Bill 73 Thursday to the 
House Local Government Committee. The bill would let counties, cities and 
towns put an optional property tax mill levy on the ballot that would raise 
money for substance abuse-prevention programs. Local governments could not 
enact the levy, which would raise money by taxing a percentage of one's 
property value, unless a majority of voters agreed.

Buzzas told the committee that Montana consistently ranks among the top of 
states with the highest number of teenagers and kids using alcohol and 
drugs. The state spends hundreds of millions of dollars dealing with the 
aftermath of drug and alcohol abuse, but very little on scientifically 
proven prevention programs.

In 1998, she said, quoting from a Martz administration study, 15 percent of 
all the tax money spent in Montana went to clean up after drug and alcohol 
abuse in some way.

"There's economic impacts," she said, adding that by spending money on 
prevention, the state could save money in the long run.

Right now, most alcohol- and drug-abuse prevention programs are temporary 
and paid for with "piecemeal" federal grants. Successful prevention 
programs need stable funding, Buzzas said. An optional mill levy would let 
voters decide if they want to pony up such dollars.

Jackie Jandt, the planning outcome officer for the Addictive and Mental 
Disorders Division of the state's health department, said that prevention 
programs have come a long way in the last 20 years. They're now grounded in 
science, not talk, she said, and are studied the same way heart disease 
prevention programs are studied.

She said science also knows a lot more about the physiological impacts of 
teen and childhood drug and alcohol use.

"Studies now show that there's a second brain growth spurt," she said, 
similar to the rapid brain development that occurs between birth and five 
years. This second brain growth starts around age 12 and can last into 
one's early 20s. But if early and late teens abuse drugs and alcohol in 
that time, it can lead to lifelong learning and memory problems.

Several studies have shown that early teens who use drugs and alcohol only 
moderately substantially reduce their math, reading and writing test 
scores, Jandt said.

No one spoke against the bill.

Rep. Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, asked Jandt why drug- and 
alcohol-prevention programs today would work any better than those of the 
past that never seemed to do anything.

Jandt said successful programs have to include kids, their parents, school 
and the community.

In an interview after the meeting, Jandt said several communities in 
Montana are successfully cutting down on teen drug use through programs 
that involve kids and parents taking classes on how to be a healthy family.

"They provide skills for all situations," she said. "When you're a parent, 
you don't just parent for specific things.

But she said the typically short lifespan of grant-funded prevention 
programs leads to a certain cynicism in the public.
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