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	CSAW Coordinates Upcoming Events

	by Vernon Robison Moapa Valley Progress The Moapa Valley Community for Substance Abuse Welness (CSAW) group held a board meeting on Wednesday evening, January 9 in the Old Logandale School building. At the meeting the board discussed its plans to take the Crystal Darkness Campaign to local high school and middle school students. Crystal Darkness is a state-wide outreach campaign to educate Nevada’s youth and adults to the dangers of methamphetamine use. CSAW plans to present a special assembly at the Moapa Valley High School (MVHS) on Tuesday, February 26 to present the Crystal Darkness materials to local students. MVHS principal, Grant Hanevold was present at the CSAW board meeting to help coordinate the efforts. Also in attendance were representatives from Principium, a group that will be presenting the Crystal Darkness materials to local students. Concern was expressed by Principium representatives that notice be sent out to parents prior to the presentation. Hanevold, who had expressed strong support fot he campaign, stated that he had sent out notice to all the parents in the monthly school parent newsletter. Hanevold also reported that the student body would be split in two parts for the assembly. The first assembly would consist of the junior and senior classes and would take place at 8:40 a.m. on February 26. The second assembly would consist of the freshman and sophmore classes and would be held at 10:15 a.m. This would allow for groups of about 300 students per group. CSAW Chairman, Bruce Whitney, said that he had also discussed the presentations with Mack Lyon Middle School principal, Dave Wilson. Wilson was very supportive and open to have the presentations given to the eighth grade class at Lyon during their health classes, Whitney said. Whitney reported that Wilson had been somewhat more reluctant to involve the whole school in the presentations. Wilson was concerned that it might be too early to expose the sixth and seventh graders to this material, Whitney said. “He said that there were probably only six or seven students in those grades that he would consider having any problem in that direction,” Whitney said. “I told him that the whole purpose of this program is to keep it that way.” Max Hook, of Principium, agreed with this. “This program isn’t an intervention program, it is a prevention program,” Hook said. “We want to let kids know about it before they get involved in this stuff.” In connection with the Crystal Darkness program, the board also discussed its efforts in performing a community drug and alcohol assessment. This assessment would seek to survey a sufficient sample of the community population to find what level of drug and alcohol abuse problems are out there and also what types of education programs are most needed. The CSAW board has created an anonymous survey which will be administered to local high school students. These surveys will be presented through the school’s math department in hopes to reach a greater scope of students in the school. Hanevold expressed his full support in administering the survey and completing the assessment. “When you have assembled all the data, I would be very interested in looking at it and studying it as well,” he told CSAW board members. Hanevold said that he had announced through the school’s January parent newsletter that the surveys would be administered to students. “The information that announces this survey is out there now,” he said. “If parents object to their kids taking the survey, they can contact the school.” Whitney said that work was being done to include middle school students in the survey as well. CSAW also has an adult version of the survey form which the group is actively administering to groups throughout the community. Community groups who would like to participate in the survey can contact Whitney at 398-3444. In this first meeting of 2008, the board spent some time reviewing its activities over the past year. These included the expansion of its 12-step programs, holding a community resource panel, staging the Every 15 Minutes program at the high school, appearing in the Veteran’s Day parade and beginning the Crystal Darkness training. Whitney expressed satisfaction with what had been accomplished. “Sometimes I feel like we are really not getting anywhere with this thing,” he said. “But when you look back at what we actually did accomplish in the past year, we actually did get quite a lot done.”