20% Governor's Set Aside Enhances Local Efforts to Reduce Drug and Alcohol Use and Address Emerging Drug Trends

The 20% Governor’s set aside is effective in many states in enhancing local efforts to address drug, alcohol and violence issues as well as dealing with emerging drug trends such as meth. This set aside allows natural partnerships to develop between local schools and their communities to address mutual substance abuse and violence concerns and also enables LEAs to leverage additional funds for the program.

The State of Idaho, for example has used a portion of its 20% Governor’s set aside to address methamphetamine, and has developed a Meth Task Force comprised of community members throughout the state A primary goal of the Task Force is to develop and distribute methamphetamine tool kits to communities in the state. These kits will include videos, charts, posters, brochures and various informational articles focusing on methamphetamine prevention. In recent years, Idaho has seen great decreases in the prevalence of methamphetamine use, as evidenced below.

Lifetime meth use among 12th graders decreased at a rate of 51.9%, from 10.4% in 1996 to 5.0% in 2004, as measured by the Idaho SDFSC Survey.

Lifetime meth use among 10th graders decreased at a rate of 33.37%, from 6.9% in 1998 to 4.6% in 2004, as measured by the Idaho SDFSC Survey.