Barnabas Health Institute Wins National Grant To Help Brick Fight Alcohol, Drug Use Among Teens

The Barnabas Health Institute for Prevention has won a national Drug Free Communities Support Program grant that will be used to fight prescription drug misuse and underage drinking in Brick.

The five-year grant, through the Office of National Drug Control Policy, will be used by the DART Coalition of Ocean County to support programs in Brick targeting teenage alcohol use and abuse, according to a news release shared at the Brick Municipal Alliance Committee meeting Monday night.

The grant will be used to expand the Lead and Seed program from Brick Township’s middle schools into the high school, to help maintain the peer program that aims to discourage alcohol and drug use, officials said.

With the D.A.R.E. program that’s in place for fifth-graders, the expanded Lead and Seed program ”will give us a program in every school in the district,” township Police Chief Rick Bergquist said.

The D.A.R.E. program has been in place in the elementary schools for a number of years, and the Lead and Seed program was started in the township’s middle schools this year. But the desire has been to expand it to the high schools, to continue trying to deter drug use with peer intervention programs in the freshman and sophomore years of high school, in the hope that it will deter students from using and abusing alcohol and drugs as they become juniors and seniors.

“Brick was identified for this grant because a needs assessment conducted by the DART Coalition identifed prescription drug misuse and underage drinking as priority problems for the town,” the release states.

The DART Coalition conducted focus groups with high school students in Brick and a survey of parents in Brick, partly in response to the skyrocketing number of deaths tied to opiod overdoses in Ocean County in 2013 -- Brick had among the highest number of overdose deaths in the county. According to the release, the surveys showed that students were taking prescription medications from their homes and the homes of family members and then misusing it. Alcohol was readily accessible, with family members, friends, and even strangers buying it for teens.

Of the parents surveyed, only 31 percent realized teens were using prescription drugs without a prescription. At the same time, the majority were aware that neighbors or other adults allow underage drinking in their homes and more than a third admitted they do not monitor the amount of alcohol in their homes on a regular basis, the release said.

The grant also will be used for education programs and meetings for seniors on monitoring their prescriptions as well as safe disposal of unneeded medications, underage drinking town hall meetings, and training for servers at bars, restaurants and liquor stores about underage drinking, according to the release.