| Dear Fred, In 2008 the State of Illinois invested 7.5 million dollars on the prevention of substance abuse targeted at our youth. On Wednesday, Quinn slammed the door on this prevention effort. He is eliminating the last 2.6 million dollars from the Department of Human Services Division of Family and Community Services Budget. In the very words of the DHS budget briefing "State funded portion of the Addiction Prevention services were eliminated in the FY2013 budget - approximately 33,500 school aged youth and adults will lose access to evidence-based substance abuse prevention services." Other key words the Governor used when presenting his budget were: Efficiencies, Rebalancing and Investing. Bill Johnson, Executive Director of CORE-ILLINOIS stated "How is taking prevention service away from over 33 thousand school aged children consistent with any of those words? How many days do we pick up a news paper, or hear a media story about another one of our children dying from an overdose? We hear daily about drugs and alcohol in our schools. Words like Heroin, K2, Bath Salts, Spice or Synthetic marijuana are all too common. Where do our kids get their information about these drugs?" With the 100% elimination of funding for prevention, they will not be getting information from a Certified Preventionist with accurate, honest and medically correct information. Jessica Hayes Executive director of IAODAPCA, the organization that certifies Preventionists in Illinois said "Our certified preventionists are able to document successful outcomes with proper prevention training and education for Illinois' youth. It saddens me to think the probability increases for those same youth to be, instead, treated by our credentialed addiction treatment professionals." Several months ago with great fan fare Governor Quinn signed a bill making Bath Salts illegal. At the signing ceremony he said ""We want to make sure our drug policies are aggressive, current and responsive,"....."These new laws bring Illinois to the cutting-edge of enforcement policies and advance our efforts to make Illinois a safe, productive and drug-free state." CORE-ILLINOIS want to ask our governor-what's changed between last summer when you make these comments to now when you eliminated funding for prevention? Sara Howe in anIADDA newsblogsaid " Currently, untreated addiction costs the State of Illinois $3 billion a year. Increases in health insurance rates, incarceration of non-violent drug offenders, domestic violence, on-the-job accidents, lost worker productivity, school drop-out rates, teen pregnancy, and traffic accidents and fatalities are all attributable to untreated addiction. In addition, prevention saves the save up to $35 for each dollar spent." Last month CORE-ILLINOIS released a fact sheet showing that drug poisoning deaths now equal deaths in motor vehicle crashes. John Reese, of CORE-ILLINOIS Legislative Committee said "there is no larger issue facing the people who care about adequate services for substance use disorders than ensuring this short sited attempt at fixing Illinois problems is overturned. Denying our kids access to substance use prevention and education must be reversed by the General Assembly. - BE THE VOICE: CALL OR WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TODAY, TELL THEM TO RESTORE PREVENTION FUNDING.
- WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF YOUR LOCAL NEWS PAPER, CALL YOUR LOCAL RADIO OR TV STATION
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