BAY Team Targets Marijuana Use

Meet Debby Perugini -- Barrington’s new anti-marijuana use project coordinator.

Perugini joined the staff of The BAY Team – the town’s substance abuse prevention coalition -- on Monday, Jan. 9. But she is hardly a stranger.

Perugini has been a volunteer board member on The BAY Team for more than a year after learning about the coalition at a “cottage” meeting with other parents. Now she will work up to 14 hours a week coordinating programs and speakers to help reduce marijuana use among high school students in particular.

“There are a lot of mixed messages out there about marijuana use,” said Perugini. “What do we want our message to be?”

Perugini will put to use her education and experience in communications with media companies and the public TV station in Colorado to create and deliver those messages.

She also will be putting together a program to help educational professionals – teachers, aides, nurses and staff – recognize drug impairment in students. An April program that will offer drug-impairment training is already on tap.

She also hopes to be able to “beef up” the health class curriculum to teach specific risks of using marijuana, which is considered a carcinogen.

“We want to counteract the mixed messages,” said Kathy Sullivan, director of the BAY Team about Perugini’s hiring.

“It is imperative what we increase our focus on preventing youth marijuana use before it starts and decreasing use where it has already begun,” added Kristen Westmoreland, the program manager for The BAY Team.

Perugini will be paid out of a federal block grant to the state department of behavioral healthcare, development disabilities and hospitals. The annual award is $75,000 for the next three to five years.

Barrington is one of eight towns to get this money for substance abuse-prevention, primarily because Rhode Island ranks first in its marijuana use, especially in the 12-17 and 18-25 age groups. Barrington teens themselves show significant marijuana use, according to a 2011 survey of The BAY Team.

Other than alcohol, marijuana is the second most-used substance, said Westmoreland, with 24 percent of high school students saying that they smoked a joint in the past 30 days.

Students also seem to be ignoring the risks in ever-greater numbers, according to the survey. This ties directly to the mixed messages, such as marijuana now being used for medicinal purposes and the legislature toying with the idea of decriminalizing possession of an ounce or less of marijuana.

Perugini has been a full-time mom to twin boys in fifth-grade most recently, she said. She worked at the Perkins School for the blind in Massachusetts when she and her husband lived there for a while after moving back to New England.

She is a Connecticut native; her husband, Patrick, is a Barrington native. They moved to Barrington about 18 months ago.