Fairfield Gets $625,000 To Prevent Teen Drug And Alcohol Use

FAIRFIELD, CT — Fairfield recently received a $625,000 grant to prevent young people from abusing drugs and alcohol.

The funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will give $125,000 per year over five years to the Fairfield CARES Community Coalition and Fairfield Public Schools.

“It provides a type of security and sustainability in order to be able to continue and build on the programs,” state Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, who co-chairs Fairfield CARES, said last week while appearing before the school board ahead of a vote to accept the grant.

The money will be used to educate parents and youth on the risks of underage drinking and cannabis, support police efforts to combat substance misuse, provide responsible server training to restaurant wait staff, offer professional development and resources to health teachers, and build the skills of youth peer prevention educators.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity for the good work that Fairfield CARES does,” Superintendent Mike Cummings said at the meeting Sept. 28.

About half the funds will go toward hiring a full-time grant administrator. The money, which is categorized as a Drug Free Communities Grant, is essentially replacing $100,000 that Fairfield CARES received annually for the past several years from Connecticut's Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. The state funds allowed the organization to hire a part-time coordinator.

“One might say that this is a continuation of what we’re doing, but, because the money is larger, we’ll be able to do more services incrementally in the two main areas that we are working on, which is alcohol and misuse of drugs,” coalition member Phil Dwyer told the school board.

Fairfield CARES was established in 2009 after a 2008 youth survey showed 38 percent of Fairfield Public Schools seventh through 12th graders had drunk alcohol in the past month and 18 percent had used cannabis, according to a news release from the coalition. Those numbers were the worst data in a five-town area at the time.

However, spring 2021 youth survey data showed only 15 percent of Fairfield seventh through 12th grade students drank alcohol in the past month and only 5 percent had used cannabis, a decline of 60.5 percent and 54.5 percent, respectively, from 2008.

The school board voted unanimously to accept the grant.