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CAST--Community Action for a Safer Tomorrow--is what South Carolina's chosen
to call our state prevention
Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant or SPF SIG. And it's basically
our efforts to address two of our biggest priority issues: underage drinking and
DUI-related crashes, by identifying the highest-need counties in our state
and supporting them and their local coalitions to find evidence-based ways to
reduce those outcomes over several years.
I think on DUI we have a couple,
if not three, major challenges. One is--
you know, we consider law enforcement to be one of our most important partners in
all of these efforts. But unfortunately we're starting these
efforts just as many of these budget cuts are kind of crippling their
manpower. So while we're looking at trying to generate more operations and
realizing more public safety checkpoints are needed--particularly in certain
high-risk areas--unfortunately they're, you know, at all-time lows for the
numbers of troopers or local law enforcement officers who even
have the overtime flexibility to do some of those operations. So that's a struggle.
Again, with DUI crashes. South Carolina historically has had
just a terrible
reputation for DUI crashes. We tend to be among the top two or three in
the state for DUI, I'm sorry, in the nation for
DUI crashes over time.
So there's a culture of drinking and driving that's gonna be very difficult
for some of these
places to try to overcome.
And the other thing that's very difficult when it comes to addressing
DUI crashes is many of our laws,
particularly our state DUI law, are state-level policies and changes.
So our local communities will try to change things the best they can,
but when we have what is generally agreed to be a weak DUI law at the
state level, they're all relatively hamstrung by their ability to make local
change. Because some of the things they need to change the most
are state-level issues, which may be something they choose to try to
address. But it's always difficult for individual communities to try to change
things when the problem's at the state level. For underage drinking, I
think, again, they found that one of the major problems is going to be
addressing the young adults and the parents who are providing alcohol. And so
people are a lot more comfortable addressing the retail aspect and the
store owners and ticketing clerks and owners of establishments. But when it
comes to really having to get
a little more direct with parents and parents getting tickets, or law enforcement
having to be a little more clear about what they're going to allow, that
sometimes can be a little more difficult situation handle. These CAST communities
have already brought together
a lot of the key partners who I think are really going to be instrumental in being
able to deal with the different aspects of the challenges they face. So
they include law enforcement. They often include the faith community. In
many cases parents and just citizens are part of these coalitions.
But they include Boys and Girls Clubs, and the
department of social service, and the department of juvenile justice. Law enforcement are
active in every one of these coalitions. So they really have started to
think about all the different partners and players who are gonna be necessary to
make some of these changes. And they brought them to the table to start,
first of all, seeing the problem from all those different perspectives. And
also having the avenues to reach out and make all the changes in the different
areas.