A leader in the wrong way

Tackling alcohol-related issues the county faces is something members of the Sweetwater County Prevention Team are ready to do.

With an action plan in hand, the team consisting of prevention specialists Danielle Deters, Megan Weston and Laura Schmid-Pizzato, manager of Recovery Services, recently gave a quick presentation to the Sweetwater County commissioners.

Along with this information, startling statics about alcohol misuse in the county was listed. Schmid-Pizzato said the Wyoming Department of Health has given the prevention team a $486,000 grant to come up with action plans for underage drinking, binge drinking, tobacco use, opioid and drug use and suicide prevention plans.

Schmid-Pizzato said they have only spent about $92,o00 of the grant because they needed to create a plan first, which took about nine months to develop.

Schmid-Pizzato said these strategies will work in this community.

Southwest Counseling Service used to take care of Sweetwater County’s prevention efforts until 2012, Schmid-Pizzato said. The state then decided it would take over the efforts. However in 2018, the state decided to relinquish the program back to the counties.

“The state people have said ‘by far, this is the best plan,”’ Schmid-Pizzato said.

While all of the areas were addressed in the plan, this focuses on the alcohol-related information given.

Weston said a needs assessment for the county was conducted and showed about 34 percent of Sweetwater County High School students reported drinking alcohol in the last 30 days. Of those reporting alcohol usage, 15 percent obtained the alcohol from their parents and 22 percent obtained the substance from another adult over 21.

“This is a problem,” Weston said.

Another statistic given was about 54 percent of county high-school students reported they hadn’t spoke to their parents during the last 12 months about the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and drug use.

To help combat this problem, the county will ensure ID scanners are available for all community events free of charge. They will also provide Training for Intervention ProcedureS (TIPS) training. According to http://www.tipsalcohol.com, “TIPS is a dynamic, skills-based training program designed to prevent intoxication, drunk driving and underage drinking by enhancing the fundamental ‘people skills’ of servers, sellers and consumers of alcohol.”

Deters addressed the concern of binge drinking in the county. She said Sweetwater is the second highest in the state and Wyoming is highest than most states. Only Fremont County had more areas of concerns.

“Binge drinking is one of our biggest problems,” Deters said.

She said the community could help curb this by serving alcoholic beverages in smaller, clear cups at special events which would made the drinks easier to identify. She said the TIPS training would also help servers identify the signs of a binge drinker and learn how to cut them off.

“We are a leader in the wrong way,” Schmid-Pizzato said.

This is something the team would like to change.