PRIDE gets $125k
PUTNAM — The Putnam Partnership to Reduce the Influence of Drugs for Everyone (PRIDE) was awarded a federal Drug Free Communities (DFC) Support Program grant totaling $125,000.
Nationwide, the grants totaled $89 million and are used to provide local community coalitions funding to prevent youth substance use, including prescription drugs, marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol. 
Putnam PRIDE will use the grant to involve and engage their local community to prevent substance use among youth.  
“Our goal is to make Putnam, a safe and drug-free place for our youth,” said Romeo Blackmar, PRIDE coordinator. “Prevention is a powerful tool to counteract drug use in our community, and we will use this funding to help youth in Putnam make healthy choices about substance use.” 
Prescription drug abuse prevention is one of the core measures of effectiveness for local DFC coalitions, and coalitions nationwide have led innovative opioid prevention initiatives. DFC’s 2016 National Evaluation End-of-Year Report found that at least 97 percent of middle school and 93 percent of high school youth report that they have not illicitly used prescription drugs in the past 30 days in DFC communities.
 Additionally, perception of risk of illicit prescription drug use was generally high (80-84%). The report also found that perceived risk of illicit use of prescription drugs was very similar to perceived risk of tobacco use (80-83 percent), and was higher than for both alcohol (69-73 percent) and marijuana use (53-73 percent). Finally, the report detailed that peer disapproval of illicit prescription drug use increased significantly for both age groups within all DFC coalitions.
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