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Commack drug forum packed
2008 survey shows low heroin use in district
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| | | Legislator John Kennedy Jr. addresses a packed Commack High School auditorium last Thursday night. Photo by Karen Forman (click for larger version) | |
February 04, 2010 | 10:47 AM
Last Thursday evening, the Commack High School auditorium was packed with close to 1,000 parents and students looking to discuss substance abuse in Commack.
Unnerving facts were disclosed as eight different speakers took center stage over the course of two and a half hours.
Drug fatalities in Suffolk County have doubled in the past five years, Suffolk County Legislator John Kennedy Jr. (R-Nesconset) told the crowd. The county witnessed 120 drug-related deaths in 2004, compared with 228 potentially drug-related deaths in 2009, he said.
"And the age is coming down," Kennedy added. "We used to see older people, in their 50s and 60s, and now we are seeing teenagers dying from drugs — kids age 18, 16, even 14. We have to say, 'No way, no how, not in my community!' It's your neighborhoods, ladies and gentlemen."
Prescription drug use is on the rise among Commack adolescents, although alcohol abuse remains the top offender, according to Commack High School psychologist Dr. John Kelly. The district conducted an anonymous survey of over 1,000 students in grades seven and nine in April 2008, according to Kelly, also project director for the Commack Coalition of Caring, which sponsored the event.
Among the restricted substances imbibed by minors in Commack, alcohol leads the pack with 26 percent of surveyed students reporting use, Kelly said; cigarettes follow at 9 percent; marijuana at 7 percent and prescription drug use is up to 4 percent.
"And 75 percent of those prescription drugs come from people the kids know — only 4 percent from dealers," said Kelly.
Fewer than 1 percent of students reported use of heroin, the opiate that has recently received media attention for its rise in popularity among Long Island teens, According to the 2008 survey, 0.4 percent of seventh-graders and no ninth-graders reported trying heroin, which translates to two students, a figure "well below" national levels," according to the psychologist. However, Kelly said, the survey findings should not be interpreted "to downplay the problem of heroin." He added. "Heroin is a scary deal."
Dr. Stephen Dewey, a neuroscientist at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, explained to parents the ease with which teenagers can obtain prescription drugs.
"My daughter had all four of her wisdom teeth pulled," Dewey related. "The doctor told her she needed to take three Vicodin a day for three days. Then he gave us a prescription for 120 Vicodin. So after she takes the nine Vicodin, the rest of the pills are just sitting in my house. You don't want to throw them away in case someone needs them; plus you paid all that money for them. But now I have to worry about all the teenagers coming in and out of my house. I have a 17-year-old son. Someone could very easily take them."
Dewey, who has been studying drug addiction for 25 years, demonstrated the effects drugs have on the human brain. Utilizing PET scans, which display brain functioning as opposed to simple anatomy, the neuroscientist said he studies "every single drug of abuse that's out there and their effects on the brain."
He has found that every commonly abused drug increases the pleasure-stimulating neurotransmitter dopamine. As an example, Dewey said, "If my son, who is a high school senior, gets a 95 on his math test, he will feel happy, because he normally doesn't do that well in math, and his brain will show about a 10 percent increase in dopamine." "If he uses methamphetamine," the scientist continued, "a PET scan will show a 700,000 to 800,000 percent increase in dopamine. Drugs of abuse have a much bigger affect."
Higher brain dopamine levels typically accompany adolescence, according to Dewey. Dopamine levels tends to fall as you get older, he said. Studies show, Dewey added, that if a child reaches the age of 22 without experimenting with drugs, the chances he or she will ever try illegal substances are almost zero.
Smoking cigarettes also elevates dopamine levels, Dewey said, serving as a gateway to other drug abuse. "Smoking cigarettes can cause you to get addicted to other drugs," he said. "Eighty nine percent of alcoholics smoke, and the numbers are higher for drug addicts."
Commack parents received a moving exhortation from U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent of 19 years, Charles Bernard. Bernard accompanied his talk with startling visuals of teenagers who died after abusing heroin.
"You want to believe your kids are telling you the truth when they say they are not using drugs," Bernard said. "You want to believe that they will do nothing wrong. You say you don't want to violate your kids' rights but I'd rather have you trample their rights rather than have you visit them in the cemetery on Christmas, Easter and their birthday."
"You need to trust but verify," the DEA agent warned parents. "I need a search warrant or consent from you to search your home, but you can search everything and you need to. We all have a tremendous role to play here. We have to raise our sons and daughters to one day take over the community."
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