DRUG FORUM DRAWS CROWD

Tough-Love Detective Urges Parents to Take Charge

That was the blunt message of Peabody police Detective Scott Richards
at last night's forum on drug awareness. The sentiment won
enthusiastic applause from a crowd of students, teachers, parents,
city officials and police officers who took up nearly every seat in
the Peabody High School auditorium, stood along the walls and at the
entrance, and sat, rapt, in the aisles. A last-minute substitution,
Richards was one of more than a dozen speakers in a program that
included plenty of frightening information revealing the scope of the
heroin epidemic on the North Shore. The meeting was organized by
District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett and leaders in law enforcement
and education and reached its climax with telling personal anecdotes
from Richards as well as Salem School Superintendent Herb Levine and
his son, Joel, a recovered OxyContin addict. The Levines are Peabody
residents. Citing his experiences at addresses where drug overdoses
have been reported, an incredulous Richards told the crowd, "I see the
kids running the household. I implore parents to be the boss in your
own house." As teens were being wheeled away on stretchers, he would
ask their mothers and fathers simple questions that they couldn't
answer: "Who was your kid with last night?"

"I don't know." He encourages the parents to be vigilant. "If it means
. what I call tossing (searching) the room. Do it. You're being a
parent who doesn't want their kids to get hooked on drugs. Heroin is
a life sentence." Explaining that he has teenagers himself, Richards
warned about suspicious behavior. "If the kid wants to put a lock on
his bedroom door," he shook his head, "like I'd let that happen. And,"
he nodded to the students, "if you don't like it - tough."

When a parent sees something disturbing, he urged them to call police
for help. "We're not going to lock up your kid," he said. "If you need
help we'll help you be a parent."

Richards' experiences dovetailed with Herb Levine's. "The road to
recovery for Joel began with a call from an officer in your
department," said a grateful Levine. "If anyone should have known that
his kid was in trouble - I should have known."

He recalled the agonies of his son's recovery. At one point he
administered pills designed to block the effects of the drugs.

"We would make him lift his tongue. We would look down his mouth with
a flashlight."

But Joel was driven by his craving for the drug-induced high. "He beat
us," Levine said, saying his son found a way to spit the pill out
undetected. Trusting their son put his life in danger, Levine
indicated. Turning to the students in the crowd, the educator pleaded
with them to contact an adult when they see a friend caught in the
throes of addiction. "Make the call," he said. "Oftentimes you are the
very first person that knows that one of your friends is in trouble.
Be less afraid of losing a friendship than the death of a friend."

Two of Joel's friends had made that call, Levine revealed. "And they
were scared to death that Joel was going to find out. But they were
more scared that Joel was going to die."

They had good reason to worry. Police Chief Robert Champagne noted
that there were 56 drug overdoses reported in Peabody last year. Four
were fatal.

George Festa of the New England High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
painted a bleak picture of extraordinarily pure heroin - mixed with
everything from powdered milk to rat poison - pouring into the
region and selling for $4 a bag. Its very potency is killing off
unsuspecting addicts in Massachusetts at a rate that even exceeds
road deaths.

Essex County totaled 39 deaths from overdoses in 2004 said State
Police Lt. Kenny Gill, but another 41 deaths - not officially ruled
overdoses - are suspected of being just that. Still more overdoses
go unreported altogether. Addiction isn't restricted to poorer users,
either.

"It does not care who your father is," Joel Levine told the crowd. "It
does not care. You will get hooked. You will."

He described his own descent into drug addiction - beginning with
marijuana use at age 14 and escalating to six OxyContin pills a day.
And just as he lied to his parents, he lied to himself, promising,
again and again, that this would be the last pill.

Finally, he entered a 12-step program, lured by the wonderful notion
that he could recover.

"Recovery from this mental obsession." It was an obsession so strong
that as he awoke in the morning "before I think about taking a shower.
Before I think about brushing my teeth. I have to call my drug man.
And that's a terrible way to live."

Last night, however, Joel Levine's friends and neighbors gave him a
long, standing ovation.