STUDENTS HEAR ABOUT CONSEQUENCES OF DRUG USE

OOLITIC - Dollens Elementary and Oolitic Middle School students got
to imagine today.

They imagined what it would be like to have 25 roommates with whom you
share a breezy room, where dinner is hot cabbage and peas on a table
boasting several views of toilets in use.

It's a twisted visual, but one that speakers Scott Callahan and Reno
Bates wanted to make sure students got in their head as a consequence
to getting involved with drugs.

Callahan, Lawrence County prosecutor, has been presenting an anti-drug
message to students during Red Ribbon Week for the better part of the
last 10 years.

Since this is his last year as prosecutor, he wanted to make his last
Red Ribbon Week anti-drug message a combination of his favorite
presentations.

He brought in his favorite speaker, Bates, and used a slideshow
including pictures from the county jail.

After Callahan told students he had never used drugs a day in his
life, he told them what an illegal drug was, and what three
consequences from using drugs could be: jail; injury to self or
others; and death.

"If you're using drugs, sooner or later someone will tell on you," he
said. "It'll be your best friend ... someone who just left your house
. someone you just had an argument with. They'll go to the police."

And if just the concepts of jail time, stomach pumping or death didn't
shake students, they got to hear first-hand some of the troubles drugs
caused Bates.

Now a youth minister at Crossroads Community Church, Bates told
students of how he promised himself he would never try drugs or
alcohol after seeing what it did to his family.

"I grew up in a violent, alcoholic, abusive home," he said.

He elaborated that he watched his family struggle with substance
abuse, and his dad going on drunken rages which led to physical attacks.

"I promised I would never ever do those things," he said.

But come the age of 13, in the midst of Bates practicing to fulfill
his dream of becoming a professional basketball player, he tried marijuana.

Later that year he tried alcohol.

Even later that year, he broke into a store and went to jail for the
first time.

"Thirteen years later, I was 26, facing 26 years in prison," he said.

Most of his trouble with the law, he explained, came from drugs.

Callahan and Bates had made it to all of the North Lawrence elementary
schools this week, sharing the message of Red Ribbon Week -- to live a
drug-free life.