“It was an awesome turnout and everyone seemed very excited to be there and learn,” said Galloway, who travels the country to discover drug and alcohol trends he can share educate others on what to look for. “The takeaways were that we have many different drugs, drug classes and items trending with all ages.”
Galloway told the audience that several schools and other agencies have seen an increase in youths requiring emergency treatment for seizures, hallucinations and psychotic episodes brought on by various substances. Some are obtained easily as some stores don’t always check IDs when selling some products, which could lead to addiction and mental health issues.
Some items can be combined with everyday items. One of the keys is looking past the obvious with substances and continuing to educate on policies and prevention education.
“We need to be more proactive in our policy and procedures in regards to drugs to try to prevent use before it gets to the point of addiction,” Galloway said.
Andy Wilson, Ohio’s Director of Public Safety and a Springfield resident, opened the program describing how times have changed and things were much simpler and how availability of substances have significantly increased for youth to get and attractively packaged and priced, increasing the appeal.
He recommended community members be aggressive in the way they protect our youth by being proactive, vigilant, situationally aware and never turning a blind eye to substance use in the community.
Carey McKee of CCPIP hopes this will also solidify her group as a source for the community to turn in preventing substance abuse. She heard a number of positive comments from all sectors, including a woman from the Ohio Extension Office, who said her organization’s members need to know the information presented, and parents said they needed to know more.
“If we don’t know what’s out there, we can’t stop it,” she said. “It’s the whole mission of our coalition to create community collaboration. Substance abuse declines when communities and coalitions come together. I hope we brought a lot of awareness and reached a lot of people we can get the message to.”
McKee said more tips from Galloway will be posted to the CCPIP website at www.clarkcountypip.org/ and its Facebook page.
One of CCPIP’s next projects is a program with Maggie Lutterus of the Prevention Action Alliance who will provide leadership on advocating and policy change.
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