PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County agencies spent a combined $17.2 million in 2007 on substance abuse-related expenditures, according to a newly published report, and a county advisory board feels this represents annual expenditures since.
“We embarked on this study in order to raise awareness about how much money is being spent on this,” said Frances Joswick, who chairs the Jefferson County Substance Abuse Advisory Board, which operates under the Jefferson County Board of Health.
“Once people know the scope of the problem, we can convince them to take action to fix this.”
Joswick said it will be necessary to prompt “a population-based shift that includes cultural changes.”
Jefferson County Sheriff Tony Hernandez agreed that information should get out to the community.
“We need to put all the information we have in digestible bites in order to feed it to the general public,” he said.
Financial impact
The report was commissioned by the Board of Health in an effort to quantify the financial impact brought about by substance abuse issues.
The numbers used for the study were gathered in 2007, but the board members believe they still accurately illustrate the spending patterns.
However, the economy has changed; there is less funding for basic programs.
The advisory board — which contains representatives from government, law enforcement and social services — is charged with assessing the problem and providing solutions for what is perceived as increasing drug dependency in the county.
The $17.2 million figure breaks down to $601 in tax money from each county resident, the report said.
It also represents about 25 percent of all the $66.6 million spending total for the entire county.
“This compares to the county general fund, which is about $16 million,” County Commissioner John Austin said.
“That’s a pretty painful figure.”
Some $4.6 million is spend on law and justice. Of that, $3.8 million — or about 82 percent — goes to drug enforcement and treatment.
“The cost to the county goes beyond incarceration,” Hernandez said. “If we have someone in custody who has a drug-related health problem, we are responsible for their care.”
Substance abuse and violence
Law enforcement officials believe that a decrease in substance abuse would result in a corresponding decrease in violent crime.
As an example, Port Townsend Police Chief Conner Daily said that all of the domestic violence calls he has worked were connected to substance abuse, as were the vast majority of child abuse cases.
Although one of the goals of the advisory board is to secure additional funding, the problem won’t be solved by money alone, said Jefferson County Community Network Program Manager Anne Dean.
“We need to fund effective programs,” she said.
“We don’t get a lot of money in Jefferson County, but we make good use of our limited resources whenever we do get any grant funding.”
Board members aren’t out to change society or compensate for generations of substance abuse.
Rather, they seek to provide people with the information to make the right decisions, they said.
“If you give people the facts in a straightforward way, they will respond,” said board member Betty Harmon.
“When I was teaching, I would tell the kids that the chemicals in marijuana are fat-soluble, which means they stay in your body for 30 days.
“One of the organs that retains THC [tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana] is the ovaries,” she said. “So it can damage a baby that is conceived when the chemicals are present.”
Harmon said the message gets through.
“One of the great rewards for me is to see one of my students with a baby, and her telling me ‘my baby was born drug-free because of what you said.'”
The board met Tuesday to begin developing specific strategies to educate the public and, as a result, decrease dependency and its accompanying costs.
The first course of action is to develop a strategy list to distribute to members of the public who want to get involved but don’t know exactly what to do.
With that in mind, the task force is going to create what Hernandez calls “a five-year business plan” to achieve the goals of decreasing substance abuse.
“This won’t work if the community is not engaged,” Joswick said.
The Substance Abuse Advisory Board meets from 3:30 p.m.to 5 p.m. on the second Tuesday of every month in the meeting room of the Mountain View Elementary School, 1919 Blaine St., Port Townsend.
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Jefferson County reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.