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Executive Director
National Masonic Foundation for Prevention
of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Among Children
The May 1987 Short Talk Bulletin, “Masons Care About
Children”, announced that “At the 1986 Conference of Grand Masters of North
America in Arlington, Virginia, approval was given for the formation of the
National Masonic Foundation for the Prevention of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Among
Children”. Coincidentally, the Foundation office was opened for business, in
downtown Washington, D.C. near the White House, at the time the Short Talk
appeared.
Since the original 13 members, eight more Grand Lodges have
now joined the Foundation for a total of 21. Several others have announced their
intention to join and several more are having the subject on the agenda for
their next annual Grand Lodge meeting.
Even more exciting, all the present members either have active drug and
alcohol abuse programs within their jurisdictions, or are aggressively planning
programs. And it is becoming increasingly clear that this effort to save our
children from drug and alcohol abuse can also accrue benefits to Freemasonry
that we had not looked for at first.
One remarkable example is the fund-raising road race
organized by the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island in May 1988. The 5-mile run and
l-mile health walk raised funds both for contributions to the National
Foundation and for the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island drug and alcohol abuse
program. The effort was well-conceived, energetically conducted, and highly
successful. Not only were funds raised, but a high degree of enthusiasm was
generated among Rhode Island Freemasons. Curiosity about Freemasonry resulted,
from both those who helped organize and those who ran the race, and support for
what the Grand Lodge was doing was so positive that several inquiries about
membership were also made.
It is the Foundation’s view that there are four main
elements to the solution of the drug and alcohol abuse problem in our country:
Awareness, Treatment, Enforcement, and Prevention.
Awareness includes private and public information
activities, as well as the national information media. Our society is presently
blessed with a wealth of information on our drug and alcohol problem (is there
anyone who believes that we do not have such a problem?). In Western society, it seems that our
first response to a social problem is to rush to inform, and this is good.
Awareness activities can accomplish two absolutely necessary ends: (l) to let us
know that there is a problem and (2) to define the dimensions of the problem for
us. This is a necessary and efficient prelude to dealing with it.
But we must be careful not to fool ourselves into believing
that awareness is the job. That if we simply publish enough pamphlets and put up
enough posters and talk about it enough on TV, the problem will somehow go away.
This will not happen. Actions must be taken.
Enforcement and Treatment also are two absolutely necessary
elements of a total solution. But they alone cannot get the job done either-and
enforcers and treatment professionals will tell you so.
Treatment must be made available by our society for
those who
have fallen into the trap of drug and alcohol addiction. Many
reasons can be given for the necessity of providing such
treat-
ment, including many urgently practical ones, but one reason
alone
suffices: if we wish to consider ourselves a humane
civilization, we
must offer help to those who have the will to seek it!
Enforcement
is absolutely necessary to keep the dam from bursting. Simply
put,
there must be some real threat to those who would profit from
human
pain and hardship. They must be made to understand that their
illegal activities could cause them grievous pain and
hardship as
But both those who work in the field of Treatment and those
who toil in Enforcement are the first to tell us that these two types of
efforts, by themselves, cannot hope to catch up to the dimensions of the drug
and alcohol abuse problem. The overwhelming nature of the problem of drug and
alcohol abuse is running far ahead of even the most optimistic projections for
treatment and enforcement resources.
Existing treatment facilities throughout the country are
straining at the seams, even with many who seek treatment—and are willing to pay
for it—being turned away.
The story of the failure of enforcement efforts has been
repeatedly described in the information media over the last several years. To
relate just one striking example, many U.S. enforcement efforts have been
directed at interdicting the supply of cocaine at its sources. A major recent
project in Colombia spent $400,000,000 over most of a year -and managed to stop
only an estimated one-percent of the flow of cocaine to the United States. And the agricultural experts tell us that
only the tiniest fraction of land, where the coca leaves and the opium poppy can
potentially be grown, is actually in use. Simple arithmetic tells us that we had
better find an answer that works if we are not to be engulfed by what are, in
the most practical sense, limitless supplies.
Those children who use mood-altering chemicals, of whatever
kind, are looking for a quick fix to the pain they feel (which is sometimes,
initially at least, just the very real pain of growing up). It is ironic, then
that our society often unthinkingly looks for quick-fix solutions to the abuse
problem. This social problem did not develop overnight, and it will not be
solved with simplistic answers. But it can be solved. The solution is being
implemented now. And it is working.
Prevention. Where prevention and intervention programs have
been implemented on a sound basis, they have worked. And they have worked to
stop the problem before it starts. That’s the good news. The bad news is that
not enough emphasis (read “resources”) is being given to the only available
solution that has been shown to work. And this is exceedingly frustrating to
those few professionals who presently have been given the resources to work with
the at-risk children. The children who, given our attention, will dry up the
demand for drugs over the coming years.
Not the least of the frustration is this: Prevention
programs can be implemented for a fraction of the cost of treatment or
enforcement or even publicity programs.
The prevention program that is showing the greatest promise
is called the Student Assistance Program. It is a program of growing popularity
which is designed to assist educators, those who frequently spend more time with
our children than anyone else, in stopping addiction tendencies before they
start. (NOTE: Write to the Foundation for a copy of the booklet, “Student
Assistance Programs: Preventing Chemical Dependency among Children—A Handbook
for Masons”.) The two types of Student Assistance Programs are the type that
have come to be called the Masonic Model, and the Community Intervention Model.
The Masonic Model was instituted by the Grand Lodge of
Pennsylvania four years ago. Its operation is simplicity itself, the right
program using the right people (educators) at the right place (educational
institutions) at the right time (with children, before they become addicted).
“Core Groups” of 5 to 7 comprised of an administrator, teachers, school nurse,
guidance counselor, etc., are selected from each school and sent to a Training
Week, usually 10 to 12 Core Groups for each such week.
The first part of the week is spent in the crucial training
of identifying behavioral characteristics. The second part is how to set up an
internal policy support system and—the nuts and bolts of this program—how to set
up the informalto-formal intervention system. The third part of the week is
spent in “modeling” or practicing the learned techniques. Interspersed
throughout the week are lectures on such subjects as the pharmacological effects
of drugs, the dynamics of addictive families, etc.
It is an intense week, with an incredible amount of
information being transmitted in a concentrated time. And it works. Figures from
Student Assistance Programs now in place show that for every thousand referrals
(i.e., kids who are identified in the early stages of risk or beginning use),
only a handful end up requiring the services of formal treatment facilities.
Almost all, in other words, are handled in a preventive manner.
Stopping Drug Use Before it Takes Hold.
The Grand Lodge of Maryland instituted its Student
Assistance Program in 1987 and word of its effectiveness spread so fast,
particularly in Baltimore’s inner city, that the Maryland governor asked for a
briefing on this new phenomenon. After hearing the details, he expressed
interest in the program and hoped to en-courage its expansion into every high
school in the State within 5 years. He also committed support from the Executive
Office to work toward that goal.
The Grand Lodge of New York began its Student Assistance
Program in 1988, with the first training week scheduled for early 1989. New York
will use the Community Intervention Model, which is simply the Masonic Model
earlier described but with other elements of the com-munity (social
institutions, legal institutions, etc.) forming part of the support system.
While representatives of other Grand Lodges are either
actively planning or considering supporting not only Student Assistance Programs
but also other types of educational programs, the Grand Lodges of Washington,
Idaho and Montana have already embarked in Student Assistance Programs.
The Role of the Blue Lodge What can individual lodges do?
Lodges
that are concerned and motivated to do something
about the problem of drug and alcohol abuse can choose any or all of several
roles as responses.
Support your National Masonic Foundation for the Prevention
of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Among Children. A national effort is an absolute
minimum necessity when we are dealing with a problem of the overwhelming
magnitude—and international implications—of the drug and alcohol traffic.
If your Grand Lodge has a drug and alcohol committee or
representative, support them. Ask them what your lodge can do to help. If your
Grand Lodge is one of the 21 members of the Foundation, write to the Foundation
for the name of your Grand Lodge Representative to the Foundation.
Devote a stated communication to the subject. Have someone
in your lodge identify an outside expert to speak to you, or better yet, you may
write to the Foundation for materials with which you can prepare a talk for your
lodge.
Identify a local prevention program (the Foundation can
help identify local sources for this kind of information) and then have a lodge
representative, with some interest in this subject, sit down with them to
explore ideas for community support. You will be amazed at the positive reaction
you will get from just showing the interest!
And finally, if you have ideas on how the Foundation can do
a better job, communicate them! We brethren together can make a difference, a
critical difference, in the fight to save our children --and our country from
the scourges of chemical dependency and alcohol abuse.
The twentieth century is drawing to a close, and
Freemasonry is finding its existence, its very principles, put to the test as
never before. We who are its present caretakers must hold these prin-ciples to
our heart as never before—and begin to address the problems of our age as never
before. And we must, for the sake of our children, with renewed energy, begin
now.
The mailing address of the National Masonic Foundation for the Prevention of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Among Children is: National Masonic Foundation, 1629 K St., NW, #606, Washington, DC 20006. Phone (202) 331-1933.