PARENTS WARN OF DRUG ABUSE

Ed Bisch of Delran, N.J., wants to warn Times Record readers that the
dangers of OxyContin abuse are very real. He should know. His 18-year-old
son died Feb. 19 after chewing the drug, which then mixed with other
substances in his system including alcohol.

"Eddie made a mistake and paid for it with his life, and I know he did not
realize how deadly this drug could be," Mr. Bisch laments. "It is a great
drug to relieve cancer patients' pain when used properly under a doctor's
supervision, but when chewed and taken with alcohol or a huge list of other
drugs, it can easily be deadly."

OxyContin is abused to get a heroin-like euphoria. Besides being chewed, it
is sometimes snorted as a powder or mixed with water and injected like
heroin. Bisch suggests that anyone who is abusing this drug should react as
though they were abusing heroin, which is an addictive drug difficult to
kick and easy to overdose on.

"If you have already done OxyContin and are not addicted, then STOP now,"
Bisch urges. "My son had done it several times before the night of his
death, but there are just too many variables and substances that increase
the power of this drug when misused. Every time you misuse this drug, it is
like playing Russian Roulette ­ and Eddie lost that night."

A distraught Brunswick parent sends a similar warning after she learned
that her "lovely" 19-year-old daughter is addicted to heroin and needs
help. "I never guessed," she writes. "She lives at home and attended
college, or so I thought. Some so-called friends urged her to 'try this,'
and she foolishly did. Lately she has been going off in the morning to a
'friend's' house and using school money for heroin. I began to wonder,
because she seemed to need money every day for books, fees, trips, etc.
When I began questioning this, she finally confessed. She is sad, sorry,
scared and wants to stop but has tried and can't."

"Hey people! We can't say, 'It won't happen to my child.' I used to think
that, but now it has happened to mine," she writes. "I think we all need help."

Martin O'Brien, a Bath native who works for a regional substance abuse
hospital in N.H., spoke at the Starlight Cafe in Bath in February on the
signs of drug abuse and difficulty of recover. In 1998, his niece died of a
heroin overdose. Where you find OxyContin abuse, you probably will
encounter heroin as well, he says, among other things:

"The average heroin addict in Maine is between 18 and 28 years old, and a
21-year-old won't think anything of selling it to a 17-year-old. The
fastest-growing group of heroin addicts are girls 15 to 18 years old."

"Heroin and OxyContin addicts only call heroin 'dope.' Dope is not weed and
not acid ... Dope is heroin."

"An estimated 1,800 addicts live in Portland alone, using 2 million bags of
heroin a year to maintain themselves. Bangor north has been devastated by
heroin."

"The only physical signs of OxyContin abuse are pinpoint eye pupils and
sometimes nodding heads while almost falling asleep." If a parent discovers
his or her child is abusing drugs, the best thing to do is force them into
treatment immediately, he says.

Most notably, O'Brien says that preventing drug abuse a community problem.
"What are we in the community doing for the kids? What do the downtown
storefronts in Bath say to the teen-agers? Why isn't there a place in town
for kids to play music? How do we find what's missing? That's a community
recovery problem."

Perhaps we all do need help.