OFFICIALS - HANOVER HAS A DRUG PROBLEM

Drugs are a problem in Hanover.

Drugs like heroin, cocaine and marijuana are probably here to
stay.

And even if you're not directly affected by drug addiction, odds are
you know someone in the area who is.

That's the type of straight talk delivered to about 40 people
gathered at a "town hall" meeting at the Hanover Community Health and
Education Center on Tuesday.

"You can buy drugs anywhere you want in this town, and you can buy
anything," Hanover Police Chief Randy Whitson told the listeners.
"This room, with the problem that we have, should be standing-room
only. This room should be packed."

Most seats in the room were empty.

The meeting, sponsored by Hanover Hospital, gave residents a chance
to hear from a handful of local panelists who deal with the problem
of drug and alcohol addiction from educational, legal and treatment
perspectives.

At the urging of some concerned residents, plans were put into motion
last year for a meeting focused specifically on substance abuse in
the Hanover area, said Shiryl Mathai, a hospital representative.

In addition to the goal of opening eyes to an existing problem,
Mathai said the hospital also wanted to provide the community with
information on available resources for battling drug and alcohol addiction.

"People want to know what's out there," he said.

But Cathy Mundorff told the listeners she found resources were scant
when she began to look last year for someone to reach out to while
dealing with her son's drug addiction.

Very little existed in terms of support for family members and
friends of drug addicts, she said.

So Mundorff recently started a support group called Nar-Anon, which
is open to anyone in the area who is affected by someone else's drug
use.

The group meets at 8 p.m. on Thursdays at St. Joseph's Catholic
Church on Grandview Road.

Support is one aspect of the group, and education is another,
Mundorff said.

"You have to learn that (addiction) is a disease," she
said.

Also at Tuesday's meeting, two local principals warned listeners not
to take a passive approach to parenting during their child's
middle-school years.

Experimenting with drugs and alcohol often begins during a child's
pre-teen and early teenage years, said Brad Arnold, assistant
principal at Emory H. Markle Intermediate School in the South Western
School District.

"Never say, 'It can't be my kid,'" he said.

Often when parents believe it is time for their child to have more
freedom, it is actually the time to be establishing boundaries, said
Pam Smith, principal of Hanover Middle School.

"They really need it even though they'll tell you differently," she
said.

Influences like MySpace.com and other Internet sites should be
monitored closely by parents, both educators agreed.

But when preventative methods don't work, there are options for
treating drug addiction.

A new medication called Suboxone eases the symptoms of drug
withdrawal and is available in the Hanover area, said Dr. Susan Peck,
whose husband Dr. Michael Peck operates a local clinic that now
offers the drug.

Similar to methadone for heroin addicts, Suboxone reduces the
influence of cravings so the drug addict can gradually lose their
dependency on the drug they are addicted to, Susan Peck said.

While many panelists offered listeners potential resources, Whitson
provided the purest dose of reality.

Whitson said he sees heroin as the drug most on the rise in use, but
cocaine and others are still widespread problems.

About 30 percent of the police department's calls are directly
related to drugs, and anywhere from 60 to 75 percent are indirectly
related, Whitson said.

The war on drugs has not been effective anywhere, including Hanover,
the police chief said.

"We're losing," he said. "We're losing badly."