FOCUS presented with $50,000 gift

By CHRIS BROWN / Journal Staff Writer

SHENANDOAH JUNCTION — The state attorney general’s office has turned a social ill into a teaching tool that will aid in preventing youngsters from turning to substance abuse.

Attorney General Darrell McGraw presented the FOCUS Coalition with a $50,000 check drawn from the $10 million settlement between the state and Purdue Pharma, makers of the drug Oxycontin, during a drunken driving prevention course at Jefferson High School on Thursday afternoon. McGraw said the money from the settlement has been left in a trust and is to be used statewide to fund programs designed to aid victims of substance abuse, or help prevent it altogether.

He said money from the trust has also been used to rehabilitate substance abusers.

The trust helps fund so-called “day report” centers, which allow offenders with a history of nonviolence to be supervised, but not incarcerated, and save West Virginia county commissions the high cost of imprisonment.

“Day report centers have an almost immeasurable value to the community,” he said.

The program required the high school students to take various sobriety tests and drive a golf cart through a tight course marked off with orange street cones — each with a picture of a house, tree, car or other obstacle — all while wearing “drunk goggles.”

The goggles gave the wearers a simulation of impaired vision a person who had consumed twice the legal limit of alcohol would experience while driving, said Christa Shifflet of FOCUS.

The students frequently had difficulty negotiating the obstacle course, and McGraw, who also took a spin through the course, called it “an obvious demonstration” of the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol.

FOCUS board member Diane Batt said she was thankful for the check, and that it would be very helpful to the program.

“($50,000) will go a long way,” Batt said.

This is the second time the attorney general’s office has presented money to the FOCUS Coalition, and McGraw said every penny of it has been essential in preventing youngsters from developing substance abuse habits.

“The opportunity to reach our youth and help them make better decisions ... (yields) long-term savings in their personal lives, as well as law enforcement, incarceration and rehabilitation costs,” he said.

— Staff writer Chris Brown can be reached at (304) 725-6581, or at cbrown@journal-news.net

Section: News    Posted: 6/1/2007