EXPERTS SAY EDUCATION IS KEY TO WAR ON DRUGS

CLINTON -- Education and prevention are the keys to fighting increasingly
deadly drug use by young people.

That was the consensus of about 100 teachers, school officials and
law-enforcement personnel who gathered this week at the Holiday Inn here
for Hunterdon County's annual Drug-Free School Zone Conference.

This year's five-hour seminar focused on heroin and Oxycontin, a
prescription drug known as the "poor man's heroin."

Oxycontin is used to treat chronic pain, but party-goers have begun abusing
it in recent years. The proliferation of new drugs such as Oxycontin makes
training and education more important than ever, experts said.

"Education works," said Linda Trombetta of Hunterdon Prevention Resources.
"It's up to you to keep the ball rolling."

Authorities still are getting a handle on the pervasiveness of the drug
problem in Hunterdon County, said Lt. Kenneth Harding of the Hunterdon
County Prosecutor's Office Narcotics Task Force. Before 2001,
fatal-drug-overdose statistics weren't kept because there were so few,
Harding said. He said there were two fatal overdoses between 1999 and 2000.

Last year in Hunterdon County, eight people died of overdoses, including
seven from heroin, Harding said. Drugs, including heroin, have killed three
people so far this year, he added.

"I've been at this for more than 30 years, and I don't think enforcement is
the answer to the drug problem," Harding said. "Education is. Children have
to be taught this stuff."

Lt. Ronald Dixon of the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office presented the
sobering reality of today's drug culture. Ecstasy and drugs frequently used
in date rapes, such as gammahydroxy butyrate, known as GHB, or Rohypnol,
are easily available and dangerous, Dixon said. The drugs are easily made
- -- GHB is a mixture of drain cleaner, engine degreaser and water -- in
crude labs set up in sinks or bathtubs. The quality of the drugs, and the
effects, are unknown until after they are taken, Dixon said.

Hunterdon County's five regional high schools have student-assistance teams
that work with students who have drug-abuse problems, said Cheryl Copeland,
a counselor at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Raritan Township.
Trained counselors work with the students and their parents to arrange
treatment and recovery programs, Copeland said.

Education can be used to dispel some teenagers' beliefs that some drugs do
not have dangerous side effects, Dixon said.

"Some people will say why don't we give it a rest already," said acting
Hunterdon County Prosecutor Steven Lember. "Why bother? You bother because
it's the only way."