Milwaukee County Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition

Why marijuana use among youth & drug overdose?

Milwaukee has many good features, but unfortunately, it also stands out as a city with crushing intergenerational poverty, high unemployment, high infant mortality, and some of the highest racial segregation in the country.

Negative socioeconomic factors and permissive attitudes toward alcohol lay the groundwork for youth substance use problems to thrive here. In order to help Milwaukee’s youth avoid life-long substance abuse and beat the odds for the intergenerational poverty and incarceration, the MCSAP coalition chose to focus its efforts on strategic and targeted substance abuse intervention.

MCSAP used a data-driven needs assessment process mixed with on-going group input (i.e., nominal group process) to identify our focus on 1) preventing marijuana use among youth, and 2) reducing drug overdose deaths as a county-wide coalition. Explore the full prioritization process in more detail below.