School and community policies designed to prevent substance use and violence are most successful when they complement one another. Make sure to collaborate with community partners to learn about and help promote policies that limit the availability and restrict the use of harmful substances and weapons in the community.

There are a variety of ways you can work with community partners to affect policy. These include the following:

• Stay abreast of key legislative issues regarding drug and violence prevention among youth, and discuss them at school meetings.

• Keep current with official reports, initiatives, and position papers on the prevention of youth crime and substance use (e.g., those released by the National Institute of Justice, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence).

• Track and document substance use and violence indicators in your community (see Compiling Your Needs Assessment Findings for some helpful tools).

• Support initiatives to reduce the availability of illegal substances and weapons.

• Become a part of an agency board so that you can have input into developing policy.

Although some new community policies may be necessary to help prevent substance use and violence among youth, many are already in place. Thus, your school-community planning team can help promote their consistent enforcement and reinforcement. (For more information on successful community policies, see Figure 3.6 in Chapter 3 of the MSC Training Manual.)