CHURCH GROUP LEARNS ABOUT REALITY OF DRUGS IN HARDIN COUNTY

Something got their attention Wednesday night. It might have been the
fake magic marker used to smoke marijuana, the scary statistics about
local drug use or even the stories of deaths, but everyone was
listening at the Drugology presentation.

Leaders of the First Christian Church in Elizabethtown, feeling
uninformed and tired of hearing stories in the news about kids
involved in narcotics, brought in Kentucky State Police Trooper Steve
Pavey to talk frankly with parents and children about drugs.

"I wasn't up on the drugs he talked about that the kids could be
getting exposed to right now," said the church's senior minister, the
Rev. Terry Jones. "I'd never heard of 'roofies' and 'ecstasy' until
tonight."

The two drugs, used respectively by abusers as a date rape and rave
party tool, have crept into the community quietly in the past few
years, Pavey said. Whether parents want to admit it or not, virtually
every known illegal drug found in the U.S. can be found in Hardin County.

A group of about 20, mostly teenagers and a few parents, examined a
few illegal pot-smoking devices Pavey brought along as visual aids. He
said ignorance to the problem only makes it spread.

The questions lobbed at the seasoned officer weren't lightweight.
Eight-year-old Cameron Creason wanted to know "just how bad drugs can
hurt you."

Pavey said he answered the boy as honestly as he knew how. They can
kill you right away or slowly destroy different parts of your body,
such as your brain, over a long period of time, he said.

"If you think you can control drugs, you're wrong," Pavey said. "Drugs
end up controlling you."

Illustrating the depths of depravity some abusers will go to for their
next high, Pavey told a story about a doctor's wife in another state
who let her young children be used in child pornography films to get
money to buy crack cocaine.

But while not all drug experiences end so terribly, some still end up
haunting former users for years.

Pavey talked about a local parent who couldn't go on a school field
trip with his 7-year-old son because a misdemeanor marijuana
conviction he got while in college showed up on his background check.

"That guy told me the worst thing he ever had to do in his life was
tell his crying son the truth about why daddy couldn't go on the trip
with him," Pavey said.

The horror of how drugs can destroy lives is far from the world
inhabited by the church's youth minister, Chris Kiger. He said that's
why Pavey was invited to speak.

"I'm sheltered from all this," Kiger said. "I'm in my safe little
place and I don't know what's even going on in the drug scene."

Gladene Clark, Creason's mother, said she and her family just moved to
Hardin County a month ago and she brought her boys to the lecture so
they could be educated as a family about not just drugs, but
specifically the local drug culture.

"I have to know what my kids will be seeing and exposed to," she said.
"We've been blessed with no drugs being in our family, but we have to
stay informed."