SPEAKER GIVES STUDENTS SOMETHING TO CHEW ON

Peter DiGiulio spits his gum onto the gym floor at Manchester Essex
Regional High School. He gets down on his knees and rolls the gum around on
the floor. He brings the gum over to the bleachers, where he wipes it
across the bottom of a girl's sneaker and a boy's sock. Then he puts the
gum back in his mouth and continues chewing.

"Ewww!" the hundreds of high school students say in unison. DiGiulio then
asks the students why they don't have the same reaction when someone at a
party tells them to smoke a joint that has been in other people's mouths.
The students fall silent.

They get the message. DiGiulio, a nationally known drug educator, addressed
the high school for more than an hour yesterday morning, combining comedy,
education and motivational speaking into a presentation that earned him a
standing ovation from students. "He really had their attention," Principal
Peter Sack said. The school had prepared a podium and microphone for
DiGiulio, but the former Babson College basketball coach instead opted to
talk in his own voice, pacing back and forth across the gym. He encouraged
students to make good decisions and to avoid excuses when they make mistakes.

Teenagers know when they're in the presence of drugs and alcohol, he said.

"Nobody carries a small bag of white powder around for no reason," DiGiulio
said, holding a bag of cocaine in the air. "Am I going to make a small
pizza? Am I going to go home and make one biscuit?"

People come up with excuses because they aren't proud of what they've done,
he said, and "if you're not proud of it, you're not being respectful of
yourself." Assistant Principal Paul Murphy started the assembly by telling
students, "We do this because we care about you and we don't want to see
anything happen to you." But that caring can only do so much, DiGiulio
said. "No matter how much we care about you," he said, "when it comes to
this stuff" - he pointed at a table of liquor bottles, drugs and
paraphernalia - "you have to care about yourself."

When DiGiulio attended Boston College, most students partied with only
booze and marijuana because cocaine was for the rich kids and heroin was
for the addicts sleeping on park benches, he said. Today, because of
dropping prices and new methods of taking harder drugs, cocaine and heroin
are more common at high school and college parties, and bags of pure heroin
powder sell for four dollars. "You don't have to put it in a needle,"
DiGiulio said. "You can sniff it up your nose, so you don't think it's that
bad."

Unlike some drugs that can make users instant addicts, such as the
prescription painkiller OxyContin, alcohol is safe when used properly,
DiGiulio said. The problem is, that's not what high school kids do. "People
drink as much as they can, as fast as they can, to get as drunk as they
can," he said. "When you drink in high school, you're getting hammered.
You're not having a glass of wine with a friend, saying cheers." The point
of the chewing gum demonstration was to show that living a drug-free life
is just a matter of common sense.

To hammer home that message, DiGiulio took out a pack of cigarettes and
read the warning label. "What the hell do you think it says 'warning' for?"
he asked. "It's not a greeting. You never see, 'warning: Happy Valentine's
Day.'" DiGiulio teaches drug education in Revere and travels to more than
100 high schools and colleges a year to speak to students and athletes.

He started making the presentations at basketball camps 16 years ago, then
moved on to schools and eventually ended up on the National Collegiate
Athletic Association's list of recommended speakers.

He has even appeared on the "Late Show with David Letterman."

"It's become a big-time job for me," he said. Murphy said he asked
DiGiulio, who has spoken in Gloucester and Rockport in the past, to come to
Manchester Essex after several area principals recommended him. Marijuana
use and drinking became a major issue at the school last year, when there
were several on-campus arrests for possession of marijuana and police
arrested 11 students for being minors in possession of alcohol.

This year there has been only one drug arrest at the school.

"If this assembly helps one student, it's certainly worth it," Murphy said.