MAY 15 (legislative day, APRIL 24), 1978.-Ordered to be printed

Mr. HATHAWAY, from the Committee on Human Resources, submitted the following

REPORT

[To accompany S. 2915]

The Committee on Human Resources, to which was referred the bill, S. 2915, to amend the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education Act to extend the authorization of appropriations for carrying out the provisions of such act, and for other purposes, having considered the same, reports favorably thereon with amendments and recommends that the bill as amended do pass.

I. SUMMARY OF THE BILL

S. 2915, as reported by the Committee on Human Resources, extends for 3 years, through fiscal year 1981, the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education Act of 1970, as amended, authorizing $10 million in fiscal year 1979, $14 million in fiscal year 1980, and $18 million in fiscal year 1981.

In addition, S. 2915 amends the act by

(1) Increasing Federal attention to alcohol and drug abuse education in rural areas and mandating that, to the maximum extent practicable, appropriations be allotted in proportion to the relative numbers of individuals within and outside of standard metropolitan statistical areas;

(2) Authorizing multiple year funding;

(3) Establishing within the Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare an Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education;

(4) Requiring coordination among alcohol, drug abuse, and educational agencies at the Federal, State, and local levels and specifically placing responsibility for coordination of all school-based alcohol and

drug abuse education programs within the Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education;

(5) Authorizing up to 10 percent of the total appropriations under the act for model projects by State and local education agencies, postsecondary institutions, and other nonprofit agencies to develop exemplary techniques and programs in alcohol and drug abuse prevention; (6) Emphasizing evaluation of programs by requiring the Commissioner of Education to conduct an independent analysis and evaluation of program funded under the act, using 3 percent of the total appropriations for this purpose, and by mandating that grantees provide proposed evaluation mechanisms in their applications for assistance; (7) Placing additional emphasis on prevention; and

(8) Strengthening the focus on the "school team" approach to alcohol and drug abuse education.

The Subcommittee on Alcholism and Drug Abuse unanimously ordered S. 2915 favorably reported on April 25, 1978. Subsequently, on May 10, 1978, the Committee on Human Resources unanimously ordered the bill favorably reported with amendments. S. 2915 is cosponsored by Senators Williams, Riegle, Javits, and Hatch.

II. BACKGROUND

A. HISTORY OF THE ACT

The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education Act was enacted in 1970. It authorized the U.S. Office of Education to conduct a comprehensive program of alcohol and drug abuse education in local schools and communities. This involved the training of school personnel and community teams, development of teaching materials and offering of courses in elementary and secondary school programs. The act also authorized community education programs, especially for parents. The 1974 amendments explicitly added alcohol abuse education to the scope of the act.

The act has had a history of limited appropriations and limited realization. After a modest start in fiscal year 1971 with an appropriation of $6.6 million, Congress provided $13.024 million in 1972. Since that time, appropriations have steadily declined with allotments of $12.4 milion in 1973 and $5.7 million in 1974. For fiscal years 19751977, no funds were requested for the program in the President's budget. However Congress did appropriate decreasing amounts of $1 million in 1975 and $2 million in 1976, 1977 and 1978. The administration's $2 million request for the program this year represents the first such request from the White House in 4 years. Yet this request is far short of the presently authorized level of $34 million.

The basic authorities for the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education Act expired at the end of fiscal year 1977, but funding of training and technical assistance for school-based teams has been continued in the 1978 fiscal year under provisions of the General Education Provisions Act. Funding for programs to train teachers-to-be in colleges of education ended in September 1977; however, all are now continuing with support from the institutions.

B. ADMINISTRATION OF THE PROGRAM

Faced with the ineffectiveness of most widely used "education programs" that put major emphasis on substances and their effects and sought simple, universally applicable approaches, the Office of Education program made the decision to emphasize people rather than substances, people who decide to use drugs and alcohol as well as people who decide not to use. The Office of Education defined use and abuse as human behavior that serves some function or would not persist. It designed a program based on the assumption that the most. effective way to discourage destructive behavior is to engage the major institutions that influence the development of young people in promoting maximum positive growth and development.

The program has made some further somewhat unusual assumptions:

Each community's problem is different, and each must assess its own problem and enlist its own human, cultural and financial resources in prevention efforts;

People can be given the skills to solve their own alcohol and drug problems;

Local programs usually involve doing differently things that are already being done and need not represent and add-on to an already burdened system;

Effective programs require change. Lasting change can come only from within, and all segments of the institution-administrators, teachers, professionals, students, and parents must be involved.

Based on these assumptions the program involves six elements:

1. Five regional resource centers which between them service the entire United States-each covering an average of 10 States. 2. Project teams, trained and supported with technical assistance by the centers, in over 3,000 school districts and communities. 3. A central data base in Chicago to compile and distribute information on the entire system.

4. A national action committee, a nationwide network of top consultants on alcohol and drug problems and on education who can be deployed as needed.

5. Demonstration programs to train teachers-to-be in colleges of education. (Funding for these projects ended September 1977. All are continuing with support from their own institutions.)

6. A small central staff in Washington, D.C., to provide leadership in planning and maintenance of the entire system. The centers enter into a yearlong (ideally 2-year when resources are available) contract with a local school. This begins with an onsite visit by center staff to initiate a needs assessment and to gather information about the school and the team members. Training itself takes 10 days to 2 weeks and is tailored to meet the distinctive needs of each team. Teams learn:

To assess the needs and expectations of the youth population to be served;

To formulate realistic objectives for meeting those needs;

To identify human and financial resources in their school and community for supporting a prevention program;

To design an action plan addressed to their carefully defined problem-specific projects to which the team is committed;

To evaluate the range of prevention materials and methods available and to adapt those that are appropriate tools for its particular school district or community setting; and

To build in feedback and evaluation, so they will know what parts of their strategy are working, and why and how.

Training is followed by onsite technical assistance or postgraduate training designed to facilitate the implementation of the action plan and teach the team to solve problems unique to that team.

Through this system, teams have been trained and supported with technical assistance in every State and territory, the number varying from State to State. This works out to some 3,000 schools and school communities, and involves approximately 16,000 educational personnel, students, and out-of-school youth and personnel from law enforce ment, health, and social services agencies, civic and church leaders, parents, and State and Federal personnel. Programs set up by these teams reach approximately 1 million individuals annually.

These teams have formed networks, many times under the leadership of the State education department or other State agencies for drug abuse, alcohol abuse and mental health. In addition, teams have raised local and State funds to support their own programs. In the last year alone, teams raised over $3,670,000.

In the 4 years from 1972 to 1976, the program trained 3,000 teams from a variety of settings, most of them, however, from rural, suburban, and small- and medium-size city school districts. In fiscal year 1977, as resources available to the program decreased, the decision was made to concentrate on the challenging problem of alcohol and drug abuse in large urban school districts to the exclusion of rural areas.

Accordingly, in fiscal 1977 the program experimented with clusters of four school teams from definable segments of large urban school districts such as a high school with its feeder junior high schools or four schools from a regional division of a larger system. Forty clusters of four schools each in large urban areas were supported for training and followup onsite assistance.

On the basis of reports that successful alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs often reduce vandalism, dropouts, truancy, racial conflict, disciplinary problems, and other destructive behavior, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration suggested a cooperative effort with the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education Program utilizing its system and strategies on the problem of prevention of school crime and violence. The Office of Juvenile Justice under an interagency agreement provided $1.233 million in fiscal 1976 and $2.8 million for fiscal 1977-78 for this effort.

The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education Act is administered by the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education Program in the U.S. Office of Education. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse which are both in the Public Health Service of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. also administer programs dealing with the problems of alcohol and

drug abuse. These agencies support large research programs and are also concerned with the delivery of treatment services for the victims of alcohol and drug abuse. The Drug Enforcement Administration in the Dept. of Justice is the lead Federal agency in drug law enforcement.

III. LEGISLATIVE CONSIDERATION

A. HEARINGS

The Subcommittee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse held 4 days of hearings on the extension of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education Act and on oversight of the operation of the program conducted under the act. These hearings were held on March 24 and 25, 1977 and April 20, 1978 in Washington, D.C., and on March 20, 1978 in Bangor, Maine.

Among the witnesses heard during the hearings in Washington were Thomas K. Mintner, Deputy Commissioner, U.S. Office of Education, Department of HEW; Dr. Helen H. Nowlis, Director, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Education Programs, U.S. Office of Education; Dr. Ernest Noble, Director, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; Dr. Robert DuPont, Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse; Carl D. Mowatt, director, Alcohol and Drug Education, Maine Department of Educational and Cultural Services; Madonna Clifford, program director, Farmington, Maine, Becky Yates, student, Mechanic Falls, Maine; Gavin Blane, chief of police, Bergenfield, N.J.; Rayburn Hesse, National Association of State Drug Abuse Program Coordinators; Richard Spoonster, National Parent Teachers Association; Jack Valenti, Motion Picture Association of America; and H. Leonard Boche, Alcohol and Drug Problems Association of North America. These witnesses and others described their experiences with various aspects of the inservice and preservice training programs conducted under the act and commented on the operation of the act from their personal and professional perspectives. They agreed that the act should be extended. Many stated that the programs must be redirected to address the needs of rural areas as well as those of urban locations. Particular praise was given for the school and community team approaches with an excellent example described by Bergenfield Police Chief Blane.

At the hearing in Bangor, Maine, testimony was received from educators, policymakers, service providers, the beer industry, and others from all parts of Maine who deal with these problems on a day-today basis. Of particular significance to the subcommittee was the fact that witness after witness detailed the need for greater attention to prevention and education efforts. The sentiment was well-expressed by John Blatchford, of the Maine Eastern Regional Council on Alcoholsm and Drug Abuse, who testified:

"What do I suggest to your subcommittee? I suggest you give high priority to activities relating to education and prevention. National costs will be lower and our citizens better served if alcoholism and drug abuse can be nipped in the bud." Concern for increased attention to the needs of rural areas was also voiced repeatedly by the witnesses who highlighted the necessity to