{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://moulton.house.gov/news/press-releases/moulton-announces-north-reading-receive-675000-federal-government-combat-youth", "Moulton Announces North Reading to Receive $675,000 from Federal Government to Combat Youth Drug, Alcohol and Tobacco Use", "2021-10-13", "2021", "2021-10", "Democrat", "House", "MA", "Seth Moulton", "M001196", "moulton.house.gov", "moulton", "https://moulton.house.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "SALEM, Mass. \u2013 Today, Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) announced that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy\u2019s Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program released a new round of grants that includes $675,000.00 worth of funding for North Reading. This grant will be used by the North Reading Youth Substance Use Prevention Coalition to reduce youth substance use, increase capacity of coalition, reduce risk factors and increase protective factors in North Reading. In 2021, the Coalition was named a model coalition by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\n\nWith this grant, the Coalition aims to target four substances. This includes marijuana, tobacco/nicotine, alcohol and non-prescribed use of prescription drugs. As necessary, the Coalition will target the use of other substances in the community.\n\nRep Moulton said: \u201cBefore the pandemic, Massachusetts and many other states saw an epidemic of prescription drug abuse and alcohol misuse that disproportionately affected young people. Those public health crises haven\u2019t ended, they just aren\u2019t getting talked about as much. North Reading\u2019s prevention coalition is doing amazing, and in many ways, unprecedented work to help people. I hope this grant extends that work to more people, and I look forward to partnering with them as they make progress.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe success of the program and application is a statement to what a community can do when they come together to tackle a problem,\u201d said North Reading Town Administrator Michael Gilleberto. \u201cThe Coalition is run by an amazing group of town professionals and volunteers from across many sectors.\u201d He added, \u201cThis highlights the fact that substance use is not a police, school, or family problem alone. It\u2019s a community problem.\u201d\n\nThe Drug Free Communities Support Program provides competitive grants to community coalitions. The grants are designed to build a community\u2019s ability to create and sustain a reduction in youth substance use. After five years, community coalitions may re-compete for another five-year cycle, but there is a cap at 10 years. After the tenth year, the coalitions must include funding for their town or city. North Reading\u2019s coalition is currently on year six.\n\nEven if a grant application is accepted, funding is not guaranteed and coalitions must submit an application every year. Among other things, the application includes an action plan with details about how the coalition intends to use the grant.\n\nDrug Free Community-funded coalitions build programs that help young Americans at risk for substance use recognize that the majority of their peers choose not to use substances. As demonstrated by independent evaluations, the DFC Support Program significantly reduces substance use among young people.\n\nAccording to the DFC, since the program\u2019s inception, the past 30-day prevalence of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and prescription drug misuse has declined significantly among middle school and high school aged youth.\n\nTo learn more about North Reading Youth Substance Use Prevention Coalition, visit their website at www.northreadingma.gov/CIT.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:24:51Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://moulton.house.gov/news/press-releases/moulton-announces-north-reading-receive-675000-federal-government-combat-youth"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.865172129124403, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}