LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS SAY DRUGS READILY AVAILABLE, USED

CHAPEL HILL -- He's a local high school student who gave his name simply as
"Bob." Bob said he started drinking when he was eight. In recent years, he
said, if he wasn't high, he was trying to get high.

Bob said he had used cocaine, tripped on LSD and other hallucinogens, and
spent hours soaring on ecstasy, which he said he easily found at many area
high school parties. When nothing else was available, he explained that he
got intoxicated with common household substances.

Once, he described using a plastic bag to inhale Freon from the back of an
air conditioner. In a matter of seconds, he recalled, he had collapsed to
the ground in convulsions.

Moments after his release from the hospital, he said he was, again, trying
to get high.

Bob might be unusual in the lengths he has gone to get intoxicated, but
experts and parents say he isn't unique. He is not the only area high
school student who has spent a significant part of his life using alcohol
and other drugs, they say.

"I honestly believe we have truly reached the phase that we're talking
about a drug epidemic," said Linda Hammock, a substance abuse counselor at
Chapel Hill High School. "I find myself regularly joking about what must be
in the water around here."

Hammock estimated that 70 to 80 percent of the area's high school students
are using alcohol and other intoxicants on a regular basis; 30 percent are
smoking, drinking or otherwise getting intoxicated often enough to affect
how they function.

"Some of these kids are very, very bright," she insisted. "They're white,
upper and middle class kids who are bored."

They also aren't concentrated in any one area high school. An increase in
drug abuse has also alarmed Ruby Bugg, Hammock's colleague at East Chapel
Hill High. Bugg said that after years of lagging behind, drug abuse among
students at her school has caught up with the situation at Chapel Hill High.

"Every year, we see an increase from the year before," Bugg acknowledged.
"But this year, I've had as many discipline referrals in two and a half
months than in the whole semester last year.I'm seeing an even greater
increase in the number of referrals from students for themselves and their
friends."

This increase in teen drug abuse hasn't been lost on Chapel Hill police
officers.

Matt Sullivan, an officer in the department's crisis unit, said that in his
experience alcohol and marijuana are the drugs of choice for many
adolescents. But a large number of teens are also using so-called club
drugs like ecstasy and gamma-hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, which Sullivan said
is used to get high rather than in its more sinister incarnation as "the
date rape drug."

From what Sullivan has seen, even the most exotic of these drugs are more
readily available than parents suspect.

"There is a vast network - an underground network," he explained. "It's
certainly not coming from street dealers."

Bob said dangerous drugs have been traded right under the noses of parents
and other authority figures. Even hard drugs like crack, he claimed, are
bought and sold on school grounds, out of book bags or lockers. Bob
asserted that a wide selection of traditional and designer drugs could be
found at a typical high school house party.

"When you go to a party, you see your friends talking, drinking and having
a good time," Bob said. "Everyone there has a buzz or is trashed off their
a-- and everyone is happy as hell."

Unlike Bob, most local teens don't betray any outward sign of drug use, say
authorities.

More typical of young substance abusers is "Charlotte," a name given by an
unassuming 15-year old with wide, curious eyes and plastic novelty
bracelets wrapped around her arms. Charlotte said she had used drugs
regularly here since she moved from another state less than a year ago.

"The only drugs I've done are alcohol and pot," Charlotte said. "When I
moved here, I was the only girl in a group of guys , and I always got
offered pot and alcohol."

Charlotte said she entered Alcoholics Anonymous after her parents learned
about her drug use, and she is now starting to realize the effect that
alcohol and marijuana had on her life and her performance in school.