From a CADCA Newsletter, 2/11/2005

Background
In his fiscal year 2006 budget request, President Bush recommended eliminating the State Grants portion of the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities (SDFSC) program despite the fact that it has historically served as the backbone of school based substance abuse prevention and intervention efforts in the United States and has had a significant impact on helping to achieve the 17% overall decline in youth drug use over the past three years.

If Congress implements this draconian cut, then the school based prevention infrastructures that are currently in place will be decimated and the 37 million youth who are served annually by programs funded through SDFSC will no longer receive the prevention education they need.

Costs associated with drug, alcohol and tobacco use add 10% - or $41 billion - to the already strained budgets of schools across the nation. The $441 million in funding for the SDFSC program is minimal when compared to these costs. We cannot afford to see the SDFSC program eliminated.

What You Can Do
Using CADCA's CapWiz system, fax the members of your congressional delegation. The members of the House and Senate will be submitting their top appropriations priorities to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Appropriations Subcommittees in the next several weeks. It is imperative that you flood your members with faxes to ensure that restoring the funding for this critical program is one of their top appropriations priorities. YOUR FAX WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE! The more letters the Hill receives on this issue, the more likely we are to stop this program from being eliminated.

After you have faxed the members of your congressional delegation, send this alert to everyone else in your network.

Timing
Fax the members of your congressional delegation immediately to ask them to make restoration of the funds for the SDFSC program one of their top priorities during the appropriations process. CADCA will continue to monitor the SDFSC program as the appropriations process moves forward and will alert you when further action must be taken.

CADCA's fax system allows you to automatically fax CADCA's sample letter on this issue to your legislators from CADCA's website. To send faxes to your legislators, go to http://capwiz.com/cadca/home.

If you would like to personalize your letter with examples from your community, please email jhembree@cadca.org for a MS Word version of the sample letter.