A $160,000 state grant will help a special task force continue its mission of ridding Shelby County of illegal drugs.

The grant will partly fund the Shelby County Drug Enforcement Task Force, an agency created two years ago to combat drug use.

&8220;Shelby County, in recent years, had gone from a rural to a suburban to an urban county in many areas,&8221; said Go. Bob Riley. &8220;This transformation has resulted in different types of problems with illegal drugs and the crimes associated with it.&8221;

Since being founded in 2005, the task force has made more than 1,000 arrests and seized more than 100,000 illegal drugs.

&8220;This task force has the ability to reduce and discourage drug use by getting at the source and arresting offenders,&8221; said Riley.

Riley notified County Manager Alex Dudchock earlier this month that the grant had been approved. Local money equaling the grant has also been promised from Shelby County.

The grant was awarded through the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affair&8217;s Law Enforcement and Traffic Safety Division.

The U.S. Department of Justice provided the funding to the state