Washington - Sen. Chuck Grassley won approval from the U.S. Senate last night to direct federal dollars to anti-drug programs as part of an "Iowa Methamphetamine Initiative."
The Iowa senator said that $400,700 would be made available for two projects in Iowa as part of the Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary spending measure passed unanimously on Thursday. Grassley began his successful effort to secure the federal resources earlier this year from the appropriations subcommittee. Specifically, the legislative package includes:
Grassley said that these statewide initiatives "will be especially helpful to individual communities who are struggling to find the resources they need to fight the threat of drugs, especially methamphetamine. The Iowa legislature passed a tough meth law this year. These federal dollars will help them pay for the new officers and new programs," he said.
The House of Representatives still must act on the CJSJ spending package. Grassley said he will work to keep the Iowa funds included in the final bill presented for the president's signature.
Earlier this week, Grassley introduced the Drug Free Families Act to provide more resources to family-oriented drug prevention organizations. This legislation would authorize $1 million over each of the next five fiscal years to create a grant program to supply parents with tools to educate their children on the dangers of drugs.
Last month, Grassley introduced a separate bill to direct additional federal resources to the meth problem in rural America. Right now, a disproportionate share of federal anti-drug resources go to larger urban areas. The bipartisan bill Grassley introduced with Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin would provide $20 million to the DEA to alleviate the growing financial burden on rural communities and smaller cities that comes from the clean-up of meth labs; provide $30 million to set-up four regional satellite training centers through the DEA to train state and local law enforcement about methamphetamine; and, increase penalties for trafficking in anhydrous ammonia, and support new research on how to make anhydrous ammonia useless in meth production.