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In 1988, Dade County’s corporate and civic leadership responded to the escalating local cocaine epidemic with the formation of The Miami Coalition. Its purpose was to bring representatives from diverse local institutions and organizations together for determining how a community might tackle a major criminal and health crisis which in turn had fueled a multitude of social, educational, moral, and economic problems. With assistance of a virtual brain trust from local universities and under the pro-bono guidance of Andersen Consulting, a community strategic planning process was activated. The process brought to the table representatives from the many disciplines impacted by and working on the problem including law enforcement, medicine, education, business and commerce, the corporate workplace, the faith community, media, the banking industry, as well as neighborhoods, youth and families.

Leaders of key corporations and most community institutions spent much of The Miami Coalition’s first year participating in a strategic planning process that provided a detailed analysis of community resources and needs as related to the local drug problem. They were briefed by experts and organized for action into specific task forces. They identified what was working in the community and what else was needed. The Miami Coalition adopted 21 "do-able goals" as their first year’s strategy. Since then, the process of analysis and response has continued each year and been refined along the way.

The Miami Coalition accomplishments are impressive as it celebrates its tenth anniversary and include:
 
  • More than 60 % of the workforce in Miami-Dade County is employed by a business or agency with a drug-free workplace policy.
  • South Florida has been the number one media market in the United States for broadcasting anti-drug messages produced by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America for the past five years.
  • The Miami Coalition has assisted local public and private sectors agencies in generating more than 92 million new dollars for their efforts in the community’s anti-drug effort.
  • More than 4,100 crack houses have been demolished throughout Greater Miami.
  • The Miami-Dade County Drug Court, the first in the nation to provide treatment for drug-involved first time offenders, has been replicated in more than 300 cities across the nation.
  • The Juvenile Assessment Center (JAC) began processing, assessing, and placing arrested youth in October 1997. It will not only better identify the 21,000 youthful offenders arrested each year, but will reduce the time law enforcement officers spend in the booking process, thereby putting police back on the streets to address community crime issues.
  • The Coalition helped secure the region’s designation as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), bringing additional law enforcement resources to our area.
  • Numerous Federal, State, and local surveys have revealed significant declines in the prevalence of substance abuse problems targeted by The Miami Coalition’s strategies included the crack cocaine epidemic, young adult and adolescent Rohypnol abuse, and youthful marijuana use.
  • At the same time, The Coalition’s community-based drug abuse surveillance system has been consistently among the first to identify and report to the nation emerging drug problems of the 1990s including the introduction of South American heroin, the adolescent marijuana epidemic, the arrival of Rohypnol into the United States, as well as the first reporting and State scheduling of GHB, nexus (2CB), and ephedrine-based products.
 

The Miami Coalition Process has taken a decade to design, mold and refine. It succeeds because of many factors and thousands of people. More and more The Coalition attributes its notable record to "What Miami Has Done."

 
 

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