TEENS GET THE STRAIGHT DOPE

Drug Offenders Speak At Summit

MALDEN -- As part of a new drug education effort, local officials and the
Malden High School principal invited a convicted drug dealer to school --
to speak to the kind of kids he used to consider customers.

"I would sell to people like you," Alex Rivera, 25, of Chelsea, who's
serving a two-year sentence at the Middlesex House of Correction in
Billerica for cocaine distribution, told ninth-graders gathered at a summit
last week. "I'm not happy for that. I'm very lucky to be here talking to
[you]. I lost my freedom for drugs."

Also speaking before the students at the high school's drug summit on
Friday were another drug convict as well as a 19-year-old heroin addict and
her mother, who found her daughter overdosed on the front porch of her home.

"The ninth grade is a good age to start" serious drug education, said City
Councilor Chris Simonelli, who helped organize the summit with Ward 7
School Committee member Gladys Rivera-Rogers and Malden High School
principal Dana Brown.

"There's been four deaths [in Malden] this summer from OxyContin,"
Rivera-Rogers said of the need to hold this forum. While the overdose
victims were in their 20s and 30s, Rivera-Rogers and Simonelli agreed it is
necessary to get information to students at a young age.

The addictive, potent painkiller OxyContin was the primary subject of the
summit. Three recovering drug addicts spoke openly about their addictions,
which led from marijuana to pills to heroin.

"This is just the first [drug summit]; we'd like to have one for every
grade level," Simonelli said.

Dr. P.S. Kishore, founder of the National Library of Addictions, Malden
Police Chief Kenneth Coye, and Middlesex County Sheriff James DiPaola, a
graduate of Malden High School and former city police officer, all spoke at
the summit.

Brown encouraged students to come forward and seek help if they have a drug
problem.

"This isn't about detention or cutting class," Brown said at the beginning
of the summit. "This is about whether someone in this school is going to
die, get sick, or go to jail because of drugs."

Kimberly Lopresti, 14, said the two-hour summit was moving and informative.

"These drugs are addictive. You should avoid drugs," Lopresti said.

"I think this will be helpful for us in the years to come," said
14-year-old Joe Sullivan.

Freshmen said that hearing from recovering addicts and the inmates had the
most impact.

"I was surprised they came out and told us what it was like in prison,"
Lopresti said of the inmates. "They were straight to the point."

Rivera-Rogers said in addition to holding a summit for all high school and
middle school grades, she would like to have a forum for parents.

"Down the road, we want to have a parent forum where parents can hear from
other parents who have been through this," she said.