What can we do? Schools combat teen drug abuse
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Each student was supposed to read the statement to their family members, to mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, or any of the other adult members of the family.
"The idea was to send the cards out just in time for Thanksgiving when we knew that there would be family members over," said Town Administrator Anthony Iacono, who along with about a dozen other Secaucus residents is a member of the Alliance.
The program, called "Promise for Life," was designed to get these kids to get their parents to be concerned about drug use. The message on the cards read:
"I (Bill or Mary, Sophia or Jose) promise to treat life as a genuine gift. I will use very opportunity to take a positive approach to challenging issues and peer pressure that I must face on a daily basis. I know there will be days when I am faced with difficult decisions, but I realize that my promise to lead a healthy and productive life will help me make the right decision and meet these challenges. I recognize that tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs are a threat to my mental and physical growth and will only serve to hinder my ability to be a productive person. I acknowledge that exhibiting love, kindness and respect to those with whom I interact will help make this a better society for all. Showing strength of character by thinking for myself, rather than following those who take risks, will not only help me, but may influence others and keep them from making a wrong choice, which could threaten their safety and well-being."
How many of the 1,600 school kids actually performed the task, nobody knows. But the second part of the assignment required them to mail to Town Hall the signed statement, and over the weeks and months that followed, the cards trickled in, a few a day, until the list grew into the hundreds.
"The idea was to get kids to acknowledge their own responsibility when it comes to alcohol and drug awareness," Iacono said. "We knew that these kids were going to be confronted with situations that we have no control over. This is all about awareness, that no matter when they go, kids are going to do what they want, and we can't stop them." Like most kids of other generations, kids today will go out on Friday and someone will eventually hand them a beer or a marijuana cigarette.
"We can't stop them from taking that drink or smoking that joint," Iacono said. "We can only make them aware of the consequences of their actions. We can tell them that it's bad for them to smoke marijuana, drink under the legal age or to take hard drugs. We can make them aware that what they do has consequences for themselves and for other people, and if they are aware, maybe they will make the right choices when they are confronted with peer pressure."
Municipal Alliance is one program seeking to help
A 2001 survey of drug use by local students, whose results were released only recently and covered in the Secaucus Reporter last week, showed significant use of drugs among students - especially in the senior year of high school (see www.secaucusreporter.com). But the town has, over the years, added programs to help educate kids against drugs, such as the Municipal Alliance, DARE, Keep a Clear Mind, Life Skills Training, Hot Air Balloon Play, Rebel and Dare, and a system in place through the Child Guidance Team that will allow the school district to respond to kids in crisis situations.
The Municipal Drug Alliance, which was relatively uninvolved in the community for several years, has been in existence for over a decade. Although all 21 counties in the state have funded programs, not every municipality does. The Secaucus Municipal Drug Alliance for years operated out of the school district, providing counseling and other services.
The state believed that successful prevention efforts required both local and broad-based support. People living in the community were best situated to determine what that community needed and what resources might be brought to bear to deal with problems there. The goal of the Alliance program is to develop alcoholism and drug abuse prevention and public awareness programs and networks in every municipality in the state. Alliance Programs are linked to the county system for planning alcoholism and drug abuse services. Each county maintains a Local Advisory Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse to determine the alcoholism and drug abuse services which it needs.
The grant money comes from the Drug Enforcement Demand Reduction funds (mandatory fines imposed on drug offenders). It is funneled through county treasuries to the municipalities. This money must be matched by the municipality. The formula is based on population, the percentage of young people in the town, the average income, and total drug arrests.
Over the last few years, the Secaucus Municipal Drug Alliance has been trying to have a greater impact on public education. In 1999, the Secaucus Health Department took over operations briefly in order to set up educational programs, but the experiment failed for several reasons, and the program went dormant for a time. Last year, the Alliance began to reorganize. Mayor Dennis Elwell appointed new members and Jill Pries, who served in a duel capacity as the school district's crisis coordinator and chairperson, began to seek out programs that might help educate parents as well as kids. These include poster contests and lectures.
New programs have moved ahead, one of which is the Promise for Life, another was a program for at-risk families called "Strengthening Families" an effort to help families struggling to cope with problems related to alcohol and drug addition.
Some see a greater need
The Alliance has not been without its critics, particularly among its own membership. Rev. Will Henkel said the $19,000 the Municipal Alliance receives goes entirely towards paying Pries' salary for the school intervention program.
Rev. Henkel said the community is not alarmed enough by the recent survey statistics. "If we were graduating with 25 percent of our seniors suffering from cancer or mental illness, we would not find that acceptable," Rev. Henkel said. "To me, this is basically the same. We have 25 percent of our graduating seniors at high risk for using drugs and alcohol, and that is not acceptable." [Twenty-five percent are at high risk, while 52 were at either high risk or moderate risk, according to the survey.]
Rev. Henkel called the results "a crisis" to which the community is paying too little attention. The risk of drug and alcohol misuse, he said, will not go away after graduation. "Ask any 30- or 40-year-old in the community how many of their classmates have died early-addiction related deaths, and you will soon learn that Secaucus has lost too many young people already," he said in a prepared statement to the school district. "That doesn't even touch those who are still alive and battling addictions, whose lives and families are deeply and negatively affected every day. Let us take small comfort if it is not our child. It is one of the children we are raising together in this village we call home. The loss affects all of us, and we share responsibility for it."
During a telephone interview, Rev. Henkel said the big weakness of the Municipal Alliance is a lack of cash.
"With all the money we get being turned over to the schools, we have no money to work in the community where the drugs and alcohol are actually being used," he said. "School officials are telling us that kids are not using the drugs in the schools, and I agree. Most drugs are being used on the street or in the home, and I would like to have someone - other than a police officer when arresting them - who can go out and relate to people in the places where we have a problem. I know several councilmen, (Mike) Grecco, (Christopher) Marra and (John) Bueckner have pledged to help. I hope we can find resources to deal with this crisis."
School officials look for a positive side
Although school officials had every reason to be concerned about the 52 percent of high school seniors at risk of drug or alcohol misuse, as shown by the survey taken in 2001, the results also gave the district reason to believe that some of the information various programs have been transmitting has reached students' ears.
The American Drug and Alcohol Survey that was administered in February 2001 and interpreted by the Rocky Mountain Behavior Science Institute of Colorado rated students in various grades as having no drug use or low, medium and high risk use. Of the students surveyed, 52 percent of the high school seniors in Secaucus were in the moderate to high-risk categories, meaning that they used drugs and alcohol often enough to warrant serious concern. The hopeful sign is that just under half of the seniors had either never tried drugs or alcohol or were at low risk for using them. The survey showed a huge percentage of middle school students had never "used drugs in a harmful way," with 89 percent in the seventh grade and 96 percent claiming so in the eighth grade.
The report also dealt with students' perception of the harm drugs can cause.
Students, according to the report, got information about drug use from a variety of sources, some more reliable than others. In the survey of the fifth and sixth graders, 84 and 85 percent respectively said they had received information about the dangers of drugs from their parents, 52 percent in both grades and from friends, 84 and 89 percent from teachers and school counselors, 67 and 76 percent from the media, 93 percent in both grades from DARE officers, 81 and 70 percent from other alcohol and drug prevention program leaders.
The report noted that serious levels of drug use are hardly ever found among very young children, but that there are always some children who had experimented with drugs and alcohol. The most hopeful sign is that many lower-grade students said they did not intend to use drugs in the future.
"However, we know that many of them will eventually try drugs as teenager or young adults, and that some of them may become heavily involved with drugs." a statement from the school district concluded. "One of the most important findings of researchers in the last several years is that the more often that children hear credible prevention messages, and the more places that they hear the same messages, the more likely they are to pay attention to those messages. Any adult who plays a role in a child's life can help to communicate these messages: 'I care about you and your future,' 'Drugs endanger your future,' and 'Do not start using drugs.' "
The school statement said messages in the school programs are not enough. "Families, staff members in the school (not just the preventions specialists), religious organizations, community groups, law enforcement officials and all the media can work together to prevent the current generation of elementary school children from taking up alcohol, tobacco and other drugs as they move into their adolescent years," the school statement said.
Next week: Programs for younger children.
Reporter's notebook: A most ordinary boy
On June 1, 1974, an 18-year-old boy named Danny went to the White Castle hamburger stand in Verona to buy heroin. He copped the dope in the parking lot, then melted it down and shot it up while in the bathroom. Somehow, he managed to stumble down four blocks to a rooming house in Montclair, climbed two sets of stairs and pounded on my door. A few moments after I let him in and sat him down on my couch, he died of what police later called a massive overdose.
Of the more than a dozen drug-related deaths I have witnessed over the years, Danny's remains the most memorable because he was the most ordinary boy I knew. He went to the local high school and participated in after-school sports. Most of the local merchants liked him and waved as he passed them on the street. How he started in drugs, I never knew. But he used to hang around the rooming house's community room with some tough characters who apparently shared dope with him from time to time.
Listening to some of the concerns raised at the Feb. 26 unveiling of The American Drug and Alcohol Survey in Secaucus, I thought of Danny again, and how easily drugs slipped into ordinary people's lives. I started my own drug habit with a puff of marijuana on the back of a bus traveling through Paterson at 16, and might have ended like Danny had people not talked sense into me.
Drug abuse becomes so insidious because it seems so matter-of-fact. The most dangerous drug dealer I ever knew was not the host of slimy characters I encountered on the streets of Los Angeles, but the son of a doctor on my block growing up, a kid who used to peddle pills to his peers.
Nearly every horror story I know about drugs - from a girlfriend skin-popping cocaine to a dear friend currently dying of AIDS thanks to dirty needles - started with a puff of pot or a sip of beer, often with the winking endorsement of adults who saw no harm in it. In college, the several attempted suicides I encountered all had a drug component mingling with emotional turmoil. Indeed, the nearly yearly suicides my uncle attempted while in my care came as a result of years of alcohol abuse.
All of these were just like Danny, risking death, playing a game of Russian Roulette with their lives, many of them ending up losers with no lives. And nearly everyone I knew started their road to ruin in high school. - By Al Sullivan
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