The Blaine County Community Drug Coalition is celebrating some good news! The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy awarded them grant money to be used over the next five years to reduce substance abuse in youth.

The coalition is awarded $625,000 dollars in a grant. They'll get $125,000 every year for the next five years. This is a dollar-for-dollar matching grant. The coalition's goals are to change the way the community thinks about the public health concern of alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco.

Executive Dir. Terry Basolo said, "We want youth to perceive adults more concerned about risk around these chemicals, because when adults are more concerned, or, youth have that perception, then that usually drives usage rates down, we also are expecting the 30 day usage of tobacco, alcohol and marijuana, based on our measures, also will go down about 5 percentage points from this year's data into next years."

Their grant money is part of a 22 million dollar sum the government has awarded to 169 coalitions. 520 applied for the grant money.