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Date: 12/12/2023
MONSON — The Monson Substance Use Community Partnership was awarded a $625,000 Drug-Free Communities grant to help support its work to prevent youth substance use, Chair Dodie Carpentier announced at the Nov. 28 Select Board meeting.
The organization partnered with Monson Public Schools to accept the grant, run by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Carpentier stated. She explained that the grant is divided across five years with $125,000 available each year and officially began on Sept. 30.
The first step in utilizing the grant funds is to pinpoint what issues the organization will focus on, Carpentier said, explaining that the partnership began researching its focus in the spring with a student survey at Monson High School.
“We’re very excited to get started with the process,” Carpentier said. “For us at the Monson Substance Use Community Partnership, that student survey information is going to be critical in helping to determine where our focus needs to lie.”
The survey results were presented to the Monson School Committee on Nov. 29 by Quaboag Hills Substance Use Alliance Prevention Director Gail Gramarossa, who is working with Carpentier and Drug Free Communities Project Director Darrleen Welden to oversee the use of the funds.
Gramarossa explained that the survey, conducted between March and May, was taken voluntarily and asked four main questions:
“You want your parents to disapprove [of substance use], you want your peers [to disapprove], and we want them [students] to think it’s harmful in order to make it much less likely that they’re going to use any substances. And that’s part of our overall prevention strategy,” Gramarossa stated.
Concerning students using substances, the survey results varied between 12th graders with the lowest at 88% of students reporting not using substances and eighth graders with the highest at 78% reporting not using substances. Gramarossa explained that the organization prefers to focus on the positive data, rather than emphasizing students who are using.
“Sometimes teens are getting negative press but most of them are making healthy choices,” she said. “We’re trying to reinforce that and maybe even correct misperceptions. Students sometimes feel like everybody is doing it — I’m not but I know everybody is having way more fun than I am. But we like to let them know — no, the majority of you are making healthy choices.”
In analyzing the survey results, QHSUA looked at the combined results for eighth, 10th and 12th graders, Gramarossa stated. Within these results, the highest usage was misused prescriptions. The same group of students agreed that while substances are harmful in general, they are especially harmful for their age group.
A notable exception was the perception of parental disapproval for marijuana use, which students across all three grades viewed as lower than the other substances on the survey, as shown in the results displayed during Gramarossa’s presentation.
“I think that’s just part of the stew that we’re in because we’re in a state where there’s readily available [marijuana]. The marijuana retailers don’t get to advertise that much but you just drive down [Interstate] 91 and there’s all those billboards. There’s a lot of visibility around marijuana,” Gramarossa said.
The results also showed a connection between increased substance use by students of color and members of the LGBTQ community with decreased daily happiness and increased daily stress as well as more physical symptoms of these emotions, Gramarossa reported. She highlighted that QHSUA is working to analyze mental health more closely.
Moving forward, Gramarossa stated that the organizations will begin to utilize the survey’s findings to narrow down a focus for the grant funds. She encouraged the School Committee to provide the community with information on these issues through events, guest speakers, parent education or social media.