HEROIN DAMAGE: DRUG EDUCATION FALLS SHORT IN MANY LOCAL SCHOOLS

Pictures of graveyards plaster the walls of Danvers High School. "Quick.
Easy. Cheap," they read. "Heroin can kill you." The posters are part of
Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett's crusade to teach teens
the dangers of opiate use. If you believe the students, they're not
learning it in health class.

"They don't actually talk to us about it," said sophomore Stephanie
Stanford, 16. "I didn't know what OxyContin was until, like, this year." So
how do they learn opiates are dangerous?

"You hear that someone ODs on it," said freshman Heather Swindell. A Salem
News review of five districts' curricula suggests local schools may not be
doing enough to make sure students know how easily opiates can kill
them. The lessons often start too late, end too early, and aren't
underlined enough in between.

* In Peabody's ninth-grade Life Choices class, students watch videos about
sex, anorexia and cocaine, but none specifically mentions heroin
or OxyContin, according to the curriculum documents. On the
multiple-choice entry exam, heroin comes up twice - both times as the
wrong answer.

* In the Hamilton-Wenham and Marblehead districts, curriculum documents
indicate opiates are addressed only in 10th-grade health class.

* Masconomet's eighth-grade health class curriculum vaguely describes
lessons on the "consequences of substance abuse," but fails to mention
opiates by name.

* In Beverly, handouts distributed to students describe the dangers of
OxyContin and inform them that heroin's nicknames include "hell dust,"
"smack" and "thunder," but the curriculum indicates those handouts come no
earlier than 11th grade.

How other North Shore schools handle the topic is unclear because their
superintendents did not turn over curriculum documents months after getting
written requests from The Salem News.

High school principals at Ipswich, Marblehead, Masconomet and Swampscott
did not return repeated calls. And one principal who agreed to an interview
suggested his students have dodged the epidemic.

"The only drug with which we've been dealing is marijuana," said Peter
Sack, principal of Manchester Essex Regional High School. "I have seen
absolutely no evidence whatsoever of OxyContin or heroin use. None. Nor
have I heard any rumors or innuendoes."

A shift in focus Part of the vagueness can be traced to a state Department
of Education framework that doesn't recommend teaching about specific
drugs. "There's been a shift away from educating about a particular drug,
to prevention," said spokeswoman Kimberly Beck. "Pharmacology is really not
the technique that's been effective."

Beck said the DOE recommends other methods. "So it's more about refusal
skills, kind of walking away, those kinds of things," she said.

But Steve Chisholm, who has counseled thousands of opiate addicts at CAB
Health & Recovery in Danvers, says educators should specifically teach
kids that while it may be easier to pop an OxyContin pill than to shoot
heroin, the effect is similar and can be just as dangerous.

"There is a knowledge deficit with the youth," he said, "so they really
don't understand they are taking a synthetic opiate" when they use
OxyContin. Based on talks with educators and health professionals, Blodgett
said he thinks children should start learning about potentially lethal
opiates in fifth grade. But in many cases, that's not happening.

"We'd never be talking about heroin in the classroom," said Rose Marie
DiResta, who retired last summer after 12 years as principal at the
Riverside Elementary School in Danvers. "Hopefully they haven't been
exposed to it yet, and this isn't the place we're going to bring it into
their life." Principal Michael Cali of Dunn Middle School in Danvers said
his teachers don't spend a lot of time discussing opiates either. "It may
be touched upon in health classes," he said. "Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but
OxyContin is a relatively new phenomenon." Making an impression What
messages the schools deliver aren't always received. "Well, we do learn
about certain drugs in school," said Danvers High sophomore Kelly Hanson.
"In health class we do learn about it. They say it's bad for you. That's
about it."

Anthony Morrison and Ervin Saravia, both juniors at Peabody High, said they
know classmates who have faked injuries, gone to the hospital, gotten
OxyContin prescriptions and sold the drug to their peers. Both said many
kids at their high school use OxyContin, but they've never learned about
its effects in a classroom.

Others at Peabody High have similar reports. "No one says anything about
it," said junior Stephanie Manning. Blodgett has described the problem to
superintendents and principals across the county, but he knows of none who
have bolstered their opiate-related education as of yet. There are some
signs of hope, though. The Salem superintendent recently agreed to co-host
a forum with Blodgett this coming Monday at Salem High School to warn
students and their parents about the dangers of OxyContin and heroin. And
Peabody superintendent Nadine Binkley recently said she would be open to
bringing in speakers to talk to students. Still, Blodgett and others say a
lot more can be done. "Most (educators) said they didn't see a lot of
heroin in our schools," said George Festa, executive director of New
England's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federal program. "And
that may be true, but I don't think so. Not with what we've been seeing."