ADMINISTRATORS AT M-S REVISIT DRUG POLICIES

MAHOMET -- School officials are examining their medication policies and
drug-education efforts after more than a dozen students were expelled from
Mahomet-Seymour High School in the past two weeks.

The students -- 11 freshmen, two sophomores, three juniors and one senior
- -- were expelled for the sale, distribution, and/or possession of
prescription drugs. Sixteen of those students were caught with some
combination of Ritalin, usually given to children with attention deficit
disorder, and OxyContin and hydrocodone, both addictive painkillers. The
17th student was caught with marijuana, but school officials said that
incident was unrelated to the others.

Through the school's "zero-tolerance" policy for drug offenses, all the
students were eligible for expulsion. Seven of the students were expelled
for the rest of this year and all of next year, and will be able to attend
an alternative school, while the rest were expelled for this year and will
be put on disciplinary probation next year.

Four weeks ago, Principal Del Ryan got a call at home on a Friday night
from parent concerned that his son had taken pills from the parent's
OxyContin prescription to school to sell.

That parent and another asked to search the teen-agers' lockers, so Ryan
met them at about 9:45 p.m. Nothing was found, but the parents gave Ryan a
list of names of students they thought were involved.

"I give the parents all of the credit for being concerned about the safety
and well-being of the students," Ryan said. "They weren't concerned about
what was going to happen to their sons. ... Had it not been for parents
that Friday night, we would not have had any information about this."

The following week, Ryan said he interviewed between 30 and 40 students and
started charting the distribution network. What started with just OxyContin
and hydrocodone, led Ryan to another, larger group of students involved
with dealing and using Ritalin. Superintendent John Alumbaugh said students
were selling their own medication or acquiring it from their siblings.

Of the students expelled for next year, three were involved with both
drugs, Alumbaugh said.

Two students were at the top of the network in charge of acquiring the
drugs or even putting pressure on other students to bring it to them, Ryan
said. Then they would turn around and distribute it.

"We had this going on right under our nose," Ryan said, sounding
frustrated. "We didn't know it was occurring. I tend to be a very visible
principal."

Because it is often prescribed to calm young children with attention
deficit disorder, Ritalin is easy for students to obtain. Morris Mosley, a
youth counselor at Prairie Center for Substance Abuse, said that as people
get older, the drug acts as a stimulant.

"It's ironic because kids being on (Ritalin) in the first place is often
because of school problems," he said. "It's not necessarily because kids
are willing to take it, so if they can get rid of it they will and if they
can make money, all the better."

Few children are brought in for treatment for abusing prescription drugs
until something like this happens, Mosley said, because parents aren't
usually looking for it. He said parents and schools have to assume drug
problems exist and look for them in all forms.

"Kids can be pretty ingenious," he said. "By the time they were found out,
that means they were getting sloppy. If they were sloppy, then they had
been doing it for a while, and hadn't even been close to getting caught."

School district policy dictates that any prescription drugs must be
administered through the office. But Alumbaugh said many students,
especially older kids, who don't want people to know they're on medication,
will avoid that procedure.

He plans to send a letter to parents asking them to pay careful attention
to their child's use of Ritalin and monitor their pills more closely.

While fewer students were involved with OxyContin, a time-release version
of oxycodone, the drug has the potential for much more serious effects. The
drug, structurally related to codeine and about as potent as morphine, is
used to treat moderate to severe pain.

The time-release mechanism means small amounts of the drug enter the body
over 12 hours. But abusers often crush the pill to ingest it all at once
for a euphoric high, increasing chances of an overdose. Since last fall,
three deaths in Champaign County have been ascribed to OxyContin.

Ryan said he had to get a quick education on the drug after hearing about
the distribution.

He said OxyContin and other "trend drugs" are covered in the school's
health curriculum.

"I'm sure they were aware of OxyContin," he said.

Still he and Alumbaugh both plan to launch new education efforts for
parents as well as students. Ryan plans to meet with each class at the
beginning of next school year to give them all the details of what happened
and hopefully get them involved in solving the drug problem.

"We've got really good kids in this school, and they don't want to be a
part of it," he said. "We need to get kids to the point where they're
willing to keep us informed."

Mosley suggested that the school have drug counselors easily accessible for
students to talk to about their problems or those of a friend.

He also said drugs should be a regular agenda item for school safety
committees. "It should be what are we hearing in other schools and what are
we doing about that here," Mosley said. "If other schools have had a
problem, kids have already heard about it."