AG UNVEILS STATE'S NEWEST ANTI-DRUG EFFORT TO STUDENTS HERE

LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. - They couldn't believe it happened to them.

The young man in the video described himself as "a good kid, from a
loving family" He's shown playing soccer, smiling for the camera.

But the boy turns from sports and good grades to drinking alcohol with
his friends as a teenager. Alcohol consumption turns to drug use. Drug
use becomes more frequent, more lethal until he nearly dies from an
overdose.

"My family was devastated," his weeping sister said in the video. "It
doesn't happen to people like us."

Her brother's drug abuse, she added, "broke us all
apart."

His mother said as she watched her unconscious son nearly die in the
emergency room, she didn't know if she should pray for him to live
because she didn't know if that would be best.

"This is a true story; this is not something we made up," state
Attorney General Tom Corbett told a group of Lancaster County middle
school students today at the end of the video called "Truth & Choices."

"He was trying to be cool, trying to fit in," Corbett told the seventh
and eighth graders of Landisville Middle School. "It's not so cool.
Not so cool to be dead. ... Dead is dead."

The 13-minute video, which featured the true story of a young man
named "Shane," was shown for the first time as part of the Attorney
General's Office anti-drug effort across the state.

It poignantly ends with a note that while Shane is alive, although in
state prison, the 14-year-old son of one of Corbett's investigators
and the son of the doctor in the video both died of accidental drug
overdoses during the past year.

The children, about 500 sitting cross-legged on the floor silently
watching the video, asked questions and answered questions put to them
by Corbett.

How many had played soccer, like Shane, when they were little, Corbett
asked.

More than half raised their hands.

How many, he asked, knew someone underage who had consumed
alcohol.

About the same number raised their hands.

The average age of people when they start using drugs and alcohol,
Corbett said, is 13. About 44 percent of middle school students, he
added, have seen someone underage drunk or drinking alcohol, using or
selling drugs.

"They looked just like you," Corbett said. "If you're doing it, stop.
If you're not, don't start."

In the video, Shane tells the students that he began drinking "a lot"
in high school, then using drugs with his friends.

"They were friends of mine," Shane said, "good friends."

But marijuana led to pills, which led to cocaine, which ended with
heroin. And heroin, Shane said, "turned me into a person I didn't want
to be anymore."

After he nearly died from the overdose and underwent rehabilitation,
Shane said, he immediately returned to drug use, unsuccessfully
robbing a bank to get money to buy more drugs.

Shane was sentenced to state prison, where, the students were told, he
will not be eligible for parole until 2009.

"I was scared to death," Shane said, asking himself as the cell door
slammed behind him: "How did I screw up this much?"

"Best-case scenario, you will be arrested and sent to jail," a drug
agent tells the audience in the video. "Worst-case scenario, you will
be dead. There are no other options."

"Why do people sell drugs?" one child asked Corbett.

How many of the students want a new iPod or Playstation, Corbett
responded. "If there's demand somebody's going to make money."

The "Truth & Choices" program, funded entirely by money confiscated
from drug arrests, is geared for middle school and high school
students and is available free to school districts across the state.

"Shane's story is a reality check for all students," Corbett said,
"Until society can cut the demand for drugs they will continue to be
an active presence in our neighborhood.

"I hope that when a student is tempted to take a drink or a drug that
they remember Shane and how his choices changed his life forever."