TAPP launches new site, initiatives

TORRINGTON — The Torrington Awareness & Prevention Partnership is a coalition of professionals, community members and other vested individuals aimed at reducing youth substance use and abuse in the city of Torrington. Recently, TAPP launched a new website, www.torringtonapp.org, along with the results of a recent survey, conducted with Torrington high school students.

The study found that underage drinking and vaping were two crucial issues, affecting the health of Torrington youth; those two issues will be central to the work of the coalition.

TAPP; formerly the Torrington Coalition to Reduce Youth Substance Use — and the Torrington Police Department have renewed a partnership to increase efforts to reduce underage drinking in Torrington in November 2018.

With funds allocated through the Drug-Free Communities grant coordinated by TAPP, the Torrington Police Department created an Underage Drinking Task Force and began holding neighborhood party patrols, DUI patrols, alcohol compliance checks, and other underage drinking prevention activities.

According to a statement from the partnership, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that approximately 88,000 people die each year due to alcohol-related causes. Further, a 2015 study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine estimated that in 2010 alcohol misuse cost the United States $249 billion; threequarters of which is related to binge drinking, according to the statement.

For information about TAPP, or the partnership between TAPP and the Torrington Police Department, contact Andrew Lyon at Andrew.Lyon@mccallcenterct.org or call 860496-2139.