Creating Opportunities for Youth in Drug Prevention

Everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White. And today we’re talking with Cindy J. Mills, and she’s from Georgia. She actually helped create a coalition in her town, and it’s been going for almost 10 years. And I’m just having her here to talk a little bit about what that was like, creating it, all the great work that they’re doing. 

And then one of the reasons I thought it would be really cool to talk with Cindy as well is she’s really involved in the board of commissioners. And for anyone who’s in prevention, the funding aspect is huge. And to know someone on that board could be a very, very important relationship and to know how you can help them so that they can help you with your initiatives as well. So Cindy, welcome to the Drug Prevention Power Hour. 

Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Absolutely. So can you just start by telling us a little bit about you, background, where you’re from, just a little bit of background. 

I grew up here in Cumming, Georgia for Scythe County and I ran for office the first time I started serving in 2013. And this is my last year. I am not going to be seeking office again for my mental health. I’ve decided I need to not be in this role, but I’m going to keep doing the drug coalition and the mental health. I have a mental health council as well. And so I didn’t combine them. I thought about combining but I felt like that there was overlap, but there was also not overlap and I didn’t want to offend and there were people that had more interest in the mental health than they did the drug, you know, more that line with the drug coalition. 

So, but in the fall of 2012, before I took office, I knew of two young boys that, had died of overdose. And my nephew was friends with both of them. And I didn’t know them close, but I knew of them. And I kept asking him, we had a brand new sheriff that was coming into office. And I remember asking him what had happened with the 15 year old that had died. And he said, it is an opioid overdose. I think he said heroin. And because I said heroin, heroin’s bad. 

And it was like, I was so in the dark of not knowing, but I found out that I was probably more in the know than 99 % of other people because of just asking questions. So I’d been in office maybe two or three months and I decided, I pride myself on being one of these collaborators that I love to bring all different people together to try to get you know, to talk about problems and find solutions. And so I brought in all of our judges, you know, everything to do with juvenile. I brought in our school superintendent. I brought in our sheriff, our solicitor, and just all facets. And we started talking about what they were seeing in their courts. In the meantime, I had a really good friend of mine that hired an interventionist to come in and work with her son and found black tar heroin in their home. And I’m like, she said, I was like, no way my son, my son would not even take a shot when he went to the pediatrician. Four people had to hold him down. There is no way that he is interjecting any type of substance inside and they found needles, head and all kinds of places in his home. And Andy wound up going and getting help and he’s done great. But I just realized, we must be having a way bigger problem that we were on the cusp of that nobody really knew about. So this committee, we started just meeting and we decided we wanted to have a drug summit. And I learned a lot through having, I think I’ve had 10 or 11 now, but you learn a lot as you’re doing it. Like you learn never to let the microphone go out into the audience because I did that. my God. Especially when the people in the audience, when your panel consists of judges and sheriffs and the audience are people that have been arrested, it can get really awkward really quick. But we have had very great success in attendance, but none as good as the first one. This shows the significance of the problem in 2013 that people were people were silently hurting. They were keeping secrets, you know, about the addiction that was occurring in their homes, especially with their children and not having resources, nowhere to go. And they were, we had the first summit and I thought I need to get somebody, name somebody to speak. And I had way too many speakers that night, I learned. 

But, and I learned that the political people are not what people are wanting to hear. You know, like I learned that people that are in recovery, make some of the very best speakers and people that are that really as my dad, my dad was an alcoholic and I always used to hear him say when he would go for help, you know, to a recovery place, he could always, he said, you can’t be essay, somebody that’s been down that same road. They, they know better. And you know, you might can, you can do that to clinicians more than you can people that have actually experienced it. So, I have found that the most relatable speakers are people that have been in it. I think it’s, but that night we had 550 people show up and we, I mean, we kept opening the room bigger and bigger and bringing out more and more chairs. And to me, that is just symbolic of the problem that was existing in our community. I’m thankful we did that because we got ahead of a lot of other communities because of just having the conversation, which is what you’re doing. But it’s just by talking about it, we made it where we didn’t realize, I mean, I had not gotten as deep into it to understand about stigma, but as we went on into it, you know, we would just encourage people to have the conversations. I’ve seen this evolution occur because of us doing it this long. 

That all of a sudden you have to build trust and you have to build, you know, where people see that you’re being just balanced, that you’re not, you know, the school system was real hesitant in the beginning, like they felt like, you know, we would be attacking them or we would be saying they’re doing something wrong and that was not it at all. They don’t want that image. Yeah.  We, no, no, no, no, no, no, especially we’re an extremely wealthy county and you know, where a lot of people lead with how wealthy they are, or a lot of people, you know, and that makes it worse in some ways because when people have those kind of masks, you know, like there, it’s more layers that have got to be peeled back to ask for help or to just be honest and to have honest dialogue is just critical.

 And that’s what we help if someone doesn’t acknowledge there’s a problem or an issue and they would rather sweep it under the rug because we’re, like you said, the mask, that’s a perfect metaphor. Like, you know, you can’t see what’s going on. Everything’s good. I have money. I have a family. I have a big house. There’s nothing that could be going on. 

Yeah, and that’s what we’ve tried our best. We’ve started from the drug coalition group that we started. Not funny, but somewhat humorous maybe. It’s according to how you look at it. When we first started, we found out that there was a SAMHSA grant out there for drug coalitions. What we didn’t know is that somebody in our community had been taking that grant improperly foralmost 10 years, to the tune of like $1 .2 million. It’s $125 ,000 a year. And yeah, when I started that, I definitely didn’t know I’d be part of a criminal investigation. And so I was able to get our staff to help me put together everything and I carried it to the sheriff’s office. It was under a Taekwondo business and supposedly they were offering all this youth stuff. 

But it really was not occurring and they have forged the judges and the sheriff and county commissioners and everybody’s name and the application was like thick. I mean a tough application and the guy when he heard that we were having the man who was 80, but when he we found out and he had cancer so they didn’t arrest him. They arrested his wife and it she wound up dying in jail in prison, but they wound up having like 40 charities. And the guy even sent a message to me through juvenile court that he was really good at doing applications if I needed help with it. And I’m like, Whoa, that’s scary. no, no, I don’t think. And it is because, and we were fearful we wouldn’t be able to get the grant because our resources had been used up by somebody unlawfully, but we were able to. 

Right, right. Well, what did they end up? Did they end up? I mean, they would probably have to sue or do something to get the money back that he would have to take care of the money back. 

I don’t, I think the money was gone. She just went to prison and then died in prison. Her children reached out to me one time. It was sad. It was sad, but they have made a lot of decisions based on nonprofits that were not accurate. 

Right. man, that’s fraud. That’s bad. 

So we got the grant. Now we’re coming down to our last year of the grant. This is what makes no sense. And is that we have got a coalition that’s fabulous. We meet every month. We’ve got a director. We have an assistant that helps her part time. We bring, it’s like an umbrella. It’s like, if you think about United Way, maybe, but you look at, we are an umbrella for all providers. Anything we have mothers that have lost children to addiction. We have a parent recovery network that came out of our organization that meets with parents. They are part of our organization. We have places that give care, some that are just men alcohols, others that are women, that they come and we have what is called the connection. 

And that is for people in recovery through the courts and not that just come in and they have 12 step programs. They have one on one counseling and it’s just a way that everybody can come together. Juvenile court comes, Sheriff’s Office come and everybody talks about what you’re seeing in the community. Your greatest concerns in the community ways that the Council can help. We’ve become once we so six years ago. I think we’re in our final year. 

I was able to ask our board to divert some funds from our social services to bring in a real drug counselor. They had been coming in a couple of days a week, and this is in our high school. And to begin with, this is how it’s evolved. Nobody really, other than the alternative school and that principal, every principal has a lot of autonomy. And this principal, knew that he needed extra help with his kids. And so I think it was something like 80 or 90 % of his kids had drug offenses or alcohol. And that went to their middle and high school. And so I asked our board, would they do a pilot program? We could hire a counselor for the school year. It was $45 ,000 and the county would pay 35. 

The Importance of Addressing a Growing Problem

And the sheriff would put in 10 from his drug seizure money. And we did it three years. We had parents coming saying, this saved my child’s life. If my child had not, because we all know that it worked in recovery. It’s all about relationships and it’s about the continuum of care. And if you get a counselor that’s talking to you and giving you confidence and finding that you can have a life free of drugs and be happy that you don’t need it to be cool, that you don’t need, it’s so much better than a scared straight something. You know, this is more about loving and it’s more about giving love. And so it’s been, it has been wildly, it’s been so successful that the principals in the past when we were begging them to get drug counselors and that a drug counselor is not like a school counselor, a drug counselor can, can speak the language and we try to work really hard. One of our members of the drug council finds these people to hire and then he always tries to make it be young, hip, you know, people that the kids will relate to, you know, and that have been in recovery at least three years themselves. 

Okay. Are there more drug counselors in the schools now, or is it one that travels throughout the county? 

Well, that one goes to a few places, but Carolyn Bordeaux was a state representative and she got us money for a second one. And so we put that at the North cluster, which is where I represent. And she’s at North High School. We’ve now got all the high schools asking. So we put in, we were part of the opioid litigation and we don’t know if we’ll get it, but we put in. 

Okay, cool. 

In Georgia, the way they’ve organized it through DBHDD, they have where they’re giving special attention or they wanted this first round of application to be women and children and workforce. And so we did a collaborative application with the Forsyth County government, the Board of Education, the University of North Georgia, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Drug Council. And we have asked, I think it was 1 .5 million, but we were giving back to, because we’ve taken in 1 .2 million of opioid dollars to our county so far, and that’ll keep growing the next 16 years, I think. But we’ve agreed that from the opioid money, we’ll pay for two drug counselors, the school system will pay for two drug counselors, and we’re asking that this opioid grant will pay for two. So that would get us from two adding four more would be to six drug counselors in our school system. Okay, that’s great. And then, it’s humongous help for these kids. it’s like, and then we have a program called Full Circle that came, I think they originated in Arizona. Do you know about Full Circle? 

I had Chandler Newton from Full Circle on our podcast. So yes. they’re awesome. my God. 

Okay, so we’ve got a full circle here. And so they work real closely with our drug counselors. So there is, you know, getting those kids on Friday night to be able to go play their, what are some of those games? I can’t remember. They use something with a fly swatter, fly swatter hockey or something. Anyway, so we get them, they have a facility. I was helpful in getting them a grant. 

They got, I think, 250 ,000 for four years or something to help with get them going good. That was another Carolyn Bordeaux. She got beat, so it’s like this huge gap. 

Cindy, okay, I need to, this is so valuable. I need to ask your advice on a bunch of stuff now because what you’re doing is awesome. And the common thread I see is what you said in the beginning, is you have the strength of bringing people together, that you’re very good at that. And a lot of the things that you’re saying is we know how important it is to have a counselor in the school and for something like Full Circle with a peer recovery network for young people so they can have community and support. And not be isolated when they make healthy decisions. And I feel like I wanna ask you, I wanna ask you so many questions, but I guess to start off, what do you think it is, like if you had to evaluate and reflect on yourself and your strengths, there’s probably people that try to bring people together and collaborate, but you seem to be really good at it. What do you think it is that makes it more successful when you bring people together? How can people do that and copy you to have all these collaborations? 

With me, it’s just who I am. You know, like I think I’ve been. I’m old enough that I’ve been active in the community. I have a trust factor, you know, that people know I’m not just wasting their time. I think I’m very sincere and genuine. Like I’m not trying to do something. It wasn’t ever a thing about reelecting me. I’ve never used it as part of my, you know, like I always mentioned that I’ve got a heart. It, in fact, it’s been used against me sometimes, you know, I’m a Republican in we’ve got this group of Republicans out there that are, I run Republican and they think that if you have a heart, you can’t be Republican. And I’m like, yeah, you can. And my faith, my faith is very important to me. And I feel like that God commends us all to take care of each other. And I don’t, it was something I couldn’t set aside. I couldn’t say, okay, now I’m in political office. That means I got to stop caring about people. 

I think our community is only as strong as our weakest and that we need to help the weak, even because they’re not going to ask for help. They’re not going to. And I tried to be present, you know, like I go to drug court graduations. I said, those are the most, the most caring group of people that are the most nonjudgmental. I spoke one time to a group, they had a little concert thing and I went and spoke and I said, you know, I know this doesn’t sound for all the lying, for all the stealing, for all the other bad things that might have occurred before sobriety. I really believe that when we get to heaven, heaven is going to be like a drug, like it’s where everybody’s not going to be judging each other on their assets or where they are in society or anything like that, I think it’s going to be on the heart. And I always feel like a drug court graduation is all about, I mean, people are clapping for people and they just encourage people and they’re not looking at what all bad they did before they got to that place. They’re just in the moment, that moment. And I think that kind of encouragement is, we need that throughout our world right now, everywhere. 

Yeah. yeah. Amen. And I’m like you, my faith drives all my decisions. Like it’s on a foundation of faith. And I think there’s, it’s, you know, coming up in election season and everything is happening. So there’s all this dilemma and stereotypes and stigma. It’s not just in recovery and prevention and stuff like that. It’s in everything. So for when I’m wrestling with who I’m voting for and stuff like that, and I call myself a Democrat, I lean Republican financially and fiscally with responsibility with funds, but then there’s that caring of people that feels democratic and I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. It doesn’t matter, right? Yeah. No, it’s about the person. 

But it shouldn’t be, but it shouldn’t be political. Mental health and drug addiction and all of those things affect everyone. And while we’re making these type of social issues be, we just had a mental health facility that we had funded for three years, voted down by our board, a reversal. And it was offering hope to so many people. 

I mean, right now we have nothing. We have nowhere for crisis stabilization at all. With 275 ,000 people, we have nothing. And they changed and it was a truly political decision. And I think when politics takes a superiority over the people it’s supposed to be serving, it’s never good. And it’s never good. No good outcome will come from it. And I mean, there’s nothing that says that Forsyth County won’t be the next school shooting or the next Walmart shooting or the next, you know, and we can’t, if, how did we get people to, if we are the ones as government that are encouraging stigmas, if we’re the ones that sit there on, when we’re in our office and we’re sitting in a public meeting and we are saying those people, or we don’t want those people. 

Or that it’ll be institutionalized and that they’re, you know, which is a crisis stabilization, four to seven days max, but that the homeless will be out there and just negative, negative, negative, instead of seeing that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity with ARPA that we’ll never have that again. We’ll never have that. So it’s frustrating. The stigmas are real. They’re real. 

Yeah. And what I’m hearing from you, Cindy, is when I asked you that question about connection and collaborating, it’s less about what you do and it’s more about who you are, is you see every person as valuable. And not only that, you’re showing up where they’re showing up. You’re at the drug court graduation. You’re meeting with people. By the time you probably are asking them about ideas and how you can collaborate, you already know them. It’s not like you’re cold outreach, emailing people and calling people saying, hey, I need money or let’s collaborate. We don’t know each other. It’s like, no, you’re building these connections because that’s who you are and you care about everyone. So then when it comes for a time to ask for something, it doesn’t feel like you’re a salesperson or someone that they don’t trust. It’s just kind of who you are. 

The Power of Collaboration in Drug Prevention

Yeah, that’s true, but we did our walk for recovery in April and because of the relationships with the mayor and it being good, you know, he was more than happy to provide us a facility two years in a row at no cost. So our drug council has never got a dime from the county. I mean, we’ve never had one. We’ve stood on our own with our SAMHSA grant, which later turned into ONDCP, I think is now who we get it from, but it did go to the CDC and then the CDC, it just kept changing. The sad thing is, is that we need to get to the federal government and get them not to stop the grant after 10 years. I’m all for like the meeting the criteria and even, you know, stepping it up, whatever, but they want you to be free standing after 10 years. And it’s hard to go to a community and raise money based on, you know, what your, people care about it only when it’s affecting their home. 

Right. And what I think is tough is that part of that money and the CADCA now is calling it the DFC, the Drug Free Communities Program, or at least the way, yeah. And so it’s 125 ,000 for 10 years, like you mentioned, and you have to reapply after five. But with the amount of money being so low, it’s actually hard because you’re basically saying you can hire one person, maybe one person and a part -time, right? But then, to expect them to run and sustain a nonprofit organization after 10 years, it’s fully sustainable, and produce all those outcomes. That’s a very tall order. It takes a very special person to be able to do that. 

The Power of Connection and Collaboration

And we’ve tried to make it where we’re very valuable. You know, like I kept telling them, you’ve got to make, we have got to make it be worthwhile. Like we’ve got to show the community. So we’ve been getting more and more involved in the schools where we train speakers in the recovery community. We tell them, you know, like we had a Heather Hayes that she’s pretty well known as an intervention person. 

And she came in and gave the language, you know, of this is good to say, this is bad to say, you know, this is bad for recovery to say this, this is good. These are people, you know, people take this. These are the things, points you need to make with kids. Kids are not dumb. They need to be talked to about the brain. They need to hear about the forming brain and how long, you know, it takes and that it’s still developing. And if you train your brain this and you know, that works way more than if you just say, no, don’t do it. Just don’t do it. Just don’t. And so we have, we’ve got a, you know, a good list of people that don’t mind going in. And so the schools call us, the health classes call us. We line up their speakers and we go in and we were able to have, and that helps. And also are the drug counselors that are in the school help with that too. 

I’ve been a part, I did principal for the day at the alternative school and I sat in on one of the therapy groups. I think there was eight or 10 kids in there. All of them were in recovery. Some only a few weeks, some, you know, I think that longest was maybe eight, nine months. And they, I asked them and the little girl, you just would have to see her to understand, but she was very pale. She had dyed her hair really white. And I got the impression that if she could have went inside the wall and not been seen, that’s where she would like to be, an invisible type person. Or that was how her look made me think that. And I said, they asked me what I liked to sit in and talk to the kids. And I just asked the kids one question. I said, You know, not being judgmental, not saying that your parents did anything wrong. But if you could go back and talk to your parents now, looking back on your childhood, is there something you wish they had done different? And that little girl spoke up. I never would have dreamed she would have. And she said, I just wish they had offered me protection. She said, I wish that they had not put the alcohol out in front of me. 

That they had not made it available to me. I wish that they had not smoked pot in front of me. She said, I don’t think I would be where I am now if they had just gave me guidelines and they had just protected me. And I just wanted to boohoo because I thought, how many kids do we have that just wish their parents would parent, or would offer them just love me enough to protect me? 

Don’t just protect me when I’m one and I’m running through a parking lot. Protect me when I get to that middle and high school age where I need to be told no. I need to have boundaries. I need to have guidance. Just give it to me, please, please. And that’s what I heard her say and it was just heartbreaking because here she is, I mean, knowing she is, you know, in the midst of addiction. And knowing that that’ll be with her the rest of her life. And that, you know, I think she had stolen some things at Walmart, drinking cough medicine and stuff just to get some alcohol content, you know, and just how do you have that kind of trauma at 15? And you’ve got, if you don’t just instill and still instill that you are worthy, you are, you know this doesn’t have to define you the rest of your life. 

Supporting Individuals in Recovery

Yeah. Well, and I think the, the tough part for parents who use is they don’t want to feel judged or different by their kids. So that it is easier for their students to use and to see that as acceptable. Right. And I’ve, I’ve had friends that I’ve talked to about using cannabis products and stuff. And I’ve had some that are like, yeah, I smoke in front of my kids and I expect them to wait till 21. And, and I’m like, okay, well that’s. 

That’s great that you expect that and you talk about why it’s important and the developing brain, but it’s also kind of looks hypocritical because you’re doing it in front of them or showing like you’re using it. And like students desperately want to be adults. Adults desperately want to be kids. Yeah, right. They think they do. It seems attractive to feel independent, but whenever I, I talk to students and they’re sharing about their, you know, their stories or, my parents would. 

They did. They think they did. You know, I would get in big trouble if I use the substance. And sometimes I’ll ask them, yeah, how do you feel about that? More times than not, they actually like it. They’re like, it’s good. I have an excuse. Like if I’m out with friends, I have an excuse not to use, or I, I see it as like they care so much that they’re trying to protect me, which I, I wouldn’t have thought a young person would think that way, but they are, they do, like you said, they crave guidelines and boundaries. 

And just to be cared for. It is a way out. I like that. I like what you said because that gives them a way, my parents would kill me. To not have that safety net and not to have that and to say, well, nobody cares about me. I mean, they don’t care if I use. My parents don’t care. And that to me is a recipe for disaster. 

Yeah, I have some parents, in fact, one, she’s a nurse and she said, I drug test my kids, you know, at random. That’s their excuse not to use. My mom is insane. She’ll drug test me. And it’s like, great. That’s what you need. 

The Role of Faith in Decision-Making

That was. and you know, parents need to not, they need to wear that like a compliment. You know, my parents insane because they want to protect me so much. I mean, don’t get me wrong. We got to let our kids have some resiliency and we’ve got to let them grow up. But we, we’ve got to protect them until that brain is formed. We have got to protect them. I put a tracker on my youngest daughter’s car and she, I didn’t tell her to begin with. 

I had a good, I had a, and she was a great kid. She’s an assistant district attorney now, but I did. And then she lied to me right off the bat about where she went after school. And I was like, you sure that’s where you went? Yeah. And I said, I said, let me see your car keys for just a second, if you don’t care. And she said, why? And I said, I don’t know. It’s my car. So let me see my car keys. And so she gave me the car keys and I said, you won’t be getting these back for a few weeks. 

And she said, why, what did I do? And I said, you’re not responsible enough to have a car. I said, you’re not responsible. If you can’t be honest with me and be truthful for me, with me, I can’t trust you to have this. This is a very big responsibility. And she, to begin with, she was like, how did she know? How did she? And then I had to tell her that I had, and then she acted all indignant, you know, how dare you have a tracker on my car? And I’m like, I this is the way it’s gonna be. But the world was starting to change with her. My oldest, it was not as, the dangers were not as big. And now the dangers are there. You know, the dangers are so much. And I do think that a lot of parents are choosing things for themselves that are unhealthy for their kids because they focus more on themselves than they do their children. And that’s not casting blame. That’s just, you know, you have a short, If I could tell people how quick your children grow up, it’s such a blink of an eye. Give them what they need right then. Just give it to them so they’ve got a chance of being all that they can be. Just give them so you know that you have provided them the best opportunity they could have for their life. That doesn’t mean material. That doesn’t mean spending money. That means just love, love, love. But don’t love blindly. 

Right. Personal time. Don’t love blindly, don’t be an enabler, but yet love them, care about them enough that they can find great success in their life. That you’ve done, and I know that we’re all human and we all make mistakes and everybody has to bounce back and recover from those. Don’t let that bring you down, but I have just seen through this that there is we not only need to empower kids, we need to empower parents because parents are a lot of the times need that encouragement, you know, of how can I parent better or how do I deal with an unruly child or how, and the funny thing, it’s not funny, it’s really sad, but that the age of mental health declining is getting younger and younger and younger. And if you’ve got, you know, a kindergartner with suicidal ideology and they’re having all these things go on, all this trauma and different things. I mean, is it unfair to say that they need more help than the child that’s not, not just for what they’re facing now, but the statistics are huge that they’re going to turn to drugs later. 

You know, that if there’s not some type of intervention with love and compassion and care and reinforcement and all those things, that child, if they’re already mentally unstable, it’s only going to get worse later on. 

Yeah. Yeah. I would love to bring it back, kind of full circle. We talked about parents activities. We talked about mental health. We talked about your coalitions and building partnerships. one thing that I noticed on your LinkedIn profile as well is you, you have a company, maybe maybe a trucking company or something. okay. 

My dad started a trucking company and me and my brother and sister are all the owners of it. We lost our mom and dad four years ago at different times. My dad four years, my mom a year and so we have, but my dad always gave us small trucking companies within his larger trucking companies. So it was, that was his way of sort of taking care of us. I’ve also sold real estate and then I had to stop doing that during my county commission years because there was a perceived conflict even though there wasn’t one there and I didn’t have time. I just didn’t have time. I’ve been so busy working as a commissioner. I do want to mention that on the coalition part of it to encourage your listeners to or your viewers to really get to know your commissioner. Look for one, if you can find one out of five or seven or however many commissioners you have that appears to have a heart. 

Empowering Parents and Protecting Children

I mean, I say that really ugly, but that appears to have a, you know, like that just has a love for other people and reach out, send them an email, say you want to sit down and talk to them and say that, I mean, you know, tell them your story and tell them what you’re seeing in the community that you think there’s ways you can work together. Because like, once I started doing this, like our deputies came to me and said, We’re seeing all this drug paraphernalia in our convenience stores. Like this was maybe 2014 and we are seeing like it looks like a rose and a bucket of ice and you buy it and it’s a meth pipe at the end of it or there’s bracelets. I mean, and I went out and started looking, it was everywhere. And, you know, like there were bracelets that looked, you know, beautiful Indian woven, you know, like. and then you unhook it and it’s a pipe. It’d be something like I would be innocent and buy my granddaughter one and then find out, my God, it’s got a pipe on it. Because it really was hidden and they had lots of, we would do at our drug summits a bedroom, a mock kid bedroom and show where all they hide. We would do the fake water bottles and the fake, we would show all that to parents. So we did an ordinance. 

And our drug coalition leader helped in CADCA. You know, they can’t do lobbying, but they can do, they can help, you know, with giving you language for laws or whatever. And so we had to do, I think we did three. And one was on the drug paraphernalia in the convenience stores. Our board said each line you carry has to be licensed and it has to be behind the counter. 

That people can’t see it. So when it was $1 ,000 a license, I mean, for each line, well, these convenience stores people are in it for money. And so that basically made it where they wouldn’t sell. It was too expensive. By the time they had to do that every year for each line that was sold, it became too, it wasn’t profitable anymore. And so then we did one. 

Vaping got huge in the midst of my 12 years in office. I don’t know what year, but it became, and all these convenience stores, the big concern was selling vaping stuff to kids. And this was a God thing. I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought, I got it. We got to tie it to the alcohol code. If we tie it to the alcohol code, because it’s three strikes and you’re out selling alcohol, if you sell, like we can take your license away if it goes to that. 

And so we tied the vaping. If you sell to an underage person and you get caught, it goes against your alcohol license. And so that was, that one was really good because that went to their pocketbooks. And so that some people just quit selling the vape stuff. I mean, that became big. And then the last one was synthetics. And we could not, because of the way the GBI works, like if there’s no way to keep up with like the Delta 8, the Delta 10, that all these, the way, there always seems like they’re a step ahead of us on everything. And so we tied it to marketing and that came from CADCA. Anything, so if they’re marketing of the product has marijuana leaves, if it has anything about getting high. 

You know anything anything in the marketing of it. It’s illegal to be in our convenience stores. So you know if it’s you know, create them in different things like that. It doesn’t cover because most of the time it’s not advertised. You know to get high, but if it is they can remove it. They can remove it. So those three things with our County Commission have been really big. And really helpful. 

Okay. This is good. I’ve just found a lot of value with just what you said in the last few minutes of reaching out to your County Commissioner, finding one, doing some research, share your story, ask for a meeting, tell them what you care about and, you know, offer to buy them coffee or whatever it would be. 

Yeah, and tell him about what other counties are doing. Sheriff, did you know in Forsyth County, Georgia, they don’t allow this, that they’ve gotten ordinance? I have sent that ordinance. I’m real big on ACCG’s board. That’s Association of County Commissioners of Georgia, and I’m on their board of managers, and I’ve sent that ordinance out to lots of counties. I mean, I’ve had store operators say, Miss Cindy, Miss Cindy, I don’t understand why I can’t sell than they can in Dawson County. And I said, I mean, because we don’t allow it here. We protect our kids. And I think when you send a message that we protect our kids, it goes a long way. 

Okay. And I love that, that you can cite other counties that do it or like, hey, they’re doing this. Why are we not doing this? Here are the benefits. And that relationship is huge for someone in that office because they’re so well connected, just like you. Cindy, before we, we’ve got a few minutes before we sign off, do you, if someone was looking for a Cindy, you know, really well connected, they’re in office, Let’s say you hadn’t started the coalition. How could someone reach out to you to ask for your help? What advice would you give someone like that? 

Send me an email until December 31st. I’m at CJ Mills at Forsythco.com. You’ve got my email. You can send it. That’s the easiest way is to email me. And I think that is the I mean, I don’t mind sharing a phone number too, but I think, you know, email is the best way. And I don’t mind staying in touch with you after I get out of office because I’m still going to be working in it. 

Okay, that’s great. And I’m glad that you said that, but I also was wondering like in just another world, right? Another life. If there’s someone in a community who’s working on a coalition and they’re new and they’re reaching out to community members and they find somebody that’s in office, is it that same formula that you shared of like how you reach out to your commissioner? Use that to reach out to anyone?

Implementing Ordinances to Protect Youth

I think so. And I think bringing, you know, you always need to find the sphere of influence, you know, like you’re who needs to be at the table, not just it doesn’t matter about the numbers. It matters that you’re really hearing from different segments of the population, you know, that you’re bringing, you know, we have become a very diverse community over just the last few years and we have a really large Indian population and getting that population to be at the table, Hispanics to be at the table because everybody, you know, talking about drugs is different. How you approach it within different diverse communities through different cultures and, you know, of being able to have those conversations and breaking down those cultural barriers are huge. I think that’s a very important thing as well. 

That’s great. That’s awesome. So for anyone listening to get in touch with probably your chamber of commerce, your local boards, seeing what your city, your county, your state has in there is probably one of the best strategies. Cause like you said, if you have a room full of the wrong people, it’s not going to go very far. But if you have even just a small room of the right people who can help you make moves and have a pulse on what’s going on and does represent the diversity of your area. 

Then you’re going to create change. Like you can’t not do it. You have all these incredible people in the room. So Cindy, thank you for being on the Drug Prevention Power Hour. It was great to hear your stories and also some like tangible takeaways that we can start doing right now to build capacity. 

And we have two youth councils that I mentioned to you earlier that’s like our drug council, but for youth that we support. Like we’re using the rest of our money that we have left over in the grant to buy. They wanted to do the naloxone kits, and we’re buying, I think, 4,000 of those for them to be able to give out and for their campaign. And we try to just really support the youth in their stuff that they do and try to encourage. They don’t have a lot of numbers in their group, but they’ve got a lot of heart and they do a lot of different campaigns. So maybe I can connect you to those kids later too.

Yeah, if they need help sharing with their peers and getting them more involved and building their group and their leadership and impact, that’s what we love to do. That’s what God put us on this earth to do. Like we’re on fire for it. We love it. So we’ll stay in touch about that. But Cindy, you’ve been so generous to me, Cindy. This is awesome. And yeah, of course. And for everyone listening, this has been another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. 

Once again, if someone hasn’t told you recently, you’re doing life -saving work. It’s going to impact lives, whether you see it now or it happens in the future, you’re planting seeds and they’re gonna grow. So keep up that incredible work. Maybe we’ll see you at one of the events that are going on nationwide. And until then, we’ll see you on another episode next Monday.