HARD DRUGS, HARD LESSONS

First of three parts

The message seems to be getting through: A Jan. 15 meeting to educate
parents about heroin use among teens and young adults drew 700 to
Butler Area Senior High School. Another meeting is scheduled for Wednesday.

On that night, home drug-testing kits will be sold for $15, and
parents will be able to talk with experts who can answer questions
about heroin use and treatment.

Parents also will see a dramatic video telling the story of a typical
suburban family destroyed when son Jonathan spiraled into addiction.

If the video, named "Heroin Kills," seems particularly apt for Butler
County, that should be no surprise -- it comes from a place much like
Butler County and was produced by a group of parents much like the
groups coming together in Butler.

In fact, one of the biggest differences between Butler County and
Carroll County, Md., is that heroin hit there several years earlier,
seeping north from Baltimore.

That means people there have had more time to assess the damage and
find ways to fight the drug, developing programs that have drawn
national and even international attention.

For the next three weeks, the Post-Gazette will examine the ways
Carroll County is fighting heroin and look at how efforts made there
might relate to Butler County.

Carroll County

Carroll County is about the same distance from Baltimore as Butler
County is from Pittsburgh. And Baltimore has been deemed "Heroin
Capital of the Nation" by the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration.

The stories of Carroll County teens driving 35 miles into Baltimore
neighborhoods to buy heroin sound all too familiar. Butler County
teens, according to police sources, drive to Pittsburgh's North Side
for theirs.

Carroll County looks a lot like Butler County, too, demographically.

The population of 150,897 is smaller than Butler's 174,083, but both
populations are overwhelming Caucasian, of German and Irish descent.

Both are rural counties that have become more suburban in recent
years, with some areas serving as bedroom communities to the cities.

Both are dotted with middle-to upper-middle-class homes, with parents
who work in professional careers and want to raise their children away
from the city.

A closer look at Westminster, the Carroll County seat, and Butler show
that both are towns founded centuries ago with main streets lined with
stores nestled in solid brick buildings that characterize the strong
communities.

In both towns, descendants of the families that settled the towns in
the early 1800s still live there, along with others who moved in
because they'd heard they're good places to raise their kids.

Radical Measures

Heroin began showing up in Carroll County around 1994, and teens began
to die in 1996. That puts it about three to four years ahead of Butler
County.

A group of parents called Residents Attacking Drugs produced "Heroin
Kills" in 1998 and released it in 1999. Word spread quickly, and the
parents found themselves flooded with orders. Within six months, the
video was being shown across the nation. Today, it's shown worldwide.

Linda Auerback, founder of Residents Attacking Drugs, said she never
imagined that the efforts of a small group of outraged and frightened
parents would have worldwide impact.

But she's had requests for "Heroin Kills" from England, South Africa,
Italy, Canada and most recently Albania. What she hears again and
again is that residents want to start groups like theirs but have no
educational tools for parents.

"We're such a small community!" Auerback said, but the response shows
that "no matter how small you are, if you band together, you can make
a world of difference."

"Heroin Kills," though hard-hitting, is shown to every eighth-grader
in Carroll County.

And the video is only one of several tools the organization is using
to try to save local teens. Members, some of them parents who have
lost children to overdoses, travel to all corners of the county,
talking about heroin and drug addiction, alerting parents and school
officials to the dangers.

The county has been plastered with bumper stickers, billboards, signs,
and even pencils and refrigerator magnets that read "Heroin Kills."
They all offer phone numbers for help. The group also has a Web site,
www.heroinkills.com, packed with information.

Lt. Terry Katz, commander of the Maryland state police barracks in
Carroll County, said the barrage of information is helping.

"Truthfully, I'm a realist. We're at a plateau," Katz said, noting
that heroin use is no longer increasing in the county. "We haven't
gotten rid of it by any means. But we've blunted it."

And they've blunted it among teens, which is the positive news that
RAD was hoping to hear. Although Carroll County General Hospital's
emergency room is still seeing overdoses, the number decreased from
131 in 1998 to 83 in 2002.

And even that number is misleadingly high. It's been a long time, Katz
said, since anyone under 19 has overdosed on heroin, and many of the
adults overdosing "are what we call 'Frequent Fliers' ... same group
of addicts who are overdosing regularly and cycling through the ER."

Katz believes there are about 600 addicts using heroin and/or crack in
the county now.

A Four-Front War

Despite his badge, Katz is realistic about the role police play.

He said those who sit back and wait for law enforcement to clean up
communities will wait forever, because it takes an entire community to
overcome the drug. And throwing users in jail isn't the solution to
the problem.

"When we arrest someone, we hear, 'You've done your job. What a great
job!' " Katz said. "But I always think, 'No, we failed. If we'd have
done a great job, we would have interdicted that kid before he went to
jail.' "

Katz said heroin has to be attacked on four fronts, and only one of
them involves arresting offenders.

The first front is educating parents and kids about drugs. Ideally
teens can be convinced not to try them in the first place. Law
enforcement is the second, trying to catch those who are using and
dealing.

Drug treatment programs are the third front, helping people get free
of the grip of drugs. The fourth is what Katz calls "habilitation" --
teaching addicted teens who have been through rehabilitation how to
live their lives without drugs.

Katz compared the overall effort to a war: To win, the community must
attack on all fronts.

"Or it's like an apple," he said. "First you cut the skin, and then
you start cutting pieces of the apple away. We're at the point where
we probably have half an apple left."

The turning point in Carroll County's battle, Katz said, came when
parents began talking about the deaths of their children. It sparked
the formation of the resident group and jolted the community out of
complacency. It was a key attack along the "public information" front.

"Police often get praise for being courageous, but here, there are
people who have a lot more courage than any police," Katz said of the
parents willing to share their stories.

A Search for Hope

If Butler County does, indeed, capitalize on Carroll County's lessons,
much thanks will have to go to Karen Breightmyer.

It was a year ago that Breightmyer, a case manager in Butler Memorial
Hospital emergency room, began searching on the Internet for something
that would help stem the tide of addicts and family members showing up
looking for help with heroin addiction.

"We just see so many. It's so heartbreaking," Breightmyer said. "It's
almost like you don't know what to do. You feel backed into a corner
with this."

She found RAD's site on one of her forays. "I saw the video and said,
'We need to get this!' We got four of them," she said.

Breightmyer passed the copies of "Heroin Kills" around to the staff,
and began showing it to parents of addicts. The hospital also lends
the video to anyone who wants to borrow it.

"Heroin Kills" uses actors to tell the story of Jonathan, a teen from
an upper-middle class suburban family, cajoled into snorting heroin by
his girlfriend's older brother, a dealer looking to expand his
customer base.

Viewers watch Jonathan lose control of his life and experience the
anguish of those around him.

Jonathan thought that if he only snorted heroin, he wouldn't become
addicted or die, but the story ends tragically and
graphically.

At the end of the video, real-life parents Shirley Andrews and Mike
O'Hara give straightforward speeches on the deaths of their own children.

Andrews' son, Scott, died of an overdose just two weeks shy of his
17th birthday in 1996, eight weeks after he began drug
rehabilitation.

Andrews, a school nurse, says on the video that she wishes the teens
who cried at Scott's funeral had loved him enough to tell a
responsible adult when he began using heroin. He might still be alive.

O'Hara's 15-year-old son, Liam, died in 1998 after snorting about $5
worth of exceptionally pure heroin through a ball-point pen shell.
O'Hara knew his son had a problem with marijuana and had taken him for
addiction treatment, only to be told by a counselor that the problem
wasn't severe. Liam had fooled even the drug assessment counselor
about his heroin use.

Three weeks later, he was dead.

Is Butler County there?

Could Butler County have its own version of Residents Attacking Drugs?
It might already.

In October, an executive from Butler radio station WLER, which had run
a series on heroin, met with an executive from Citizens National Bank,
which was offering community drug awareness programs. They formed
Butler County Against Heroin, and started inviting people from various
institutions to join.

A number of Butler Memorial nurses got involved, as did Edward Fink,
superintendent of the Butler Area School District. The nurses told
Fink about "Heroin Kills," and persuaded him to show it at Wed-
nesday's meeting.

Although the organization's first public session in January was only
open to parents, students can attend the meeting Wednesday and can
watch the video. It will be shown at 6:20 p.m. in the senior high
school choral room, and again later, after those attending have a
chance to learn about and buy drug-testing kits.

Those at the session also will be able to take part in an auction to
raise money for the group. Fink said Steelers Hall-of-Famer Jack Ham
- - who now runs a drug-testing business, among other interests - will
be on hand to autograph a football for the auction.

Ham won't be the only celebrity there. The former Big Boy statue that
once greeted diners at the Big Boy restaurant in Cranberry will be
auctioned off as well.

When Citizens National Bank bought the closed restaurant to renovate
it into a bank, it inherited Big Boy as part of the deal. Now it's
willing to part with the plastic commercial icon for a good cause.

Another group getting involved is Soroptimist International of Butler
County. Club President Jan David of Butler Township said the
professional women's group hopes to raise enough money to put copies
of "Heroin Kills" at video rental stores throughout the county, so
patrons can borrow them free of charge.

David said she chose the video project after watching a close friend
struggle with a son's heroin addiction.

"Her son wiped out their savings account, checking account, credit
cards ... everything. He's in jail now," David said.

David didn't think the school districts were doing enough to warn
people and decided to push ahead herself and to get her group involved.

The Soroptimists are coordinating efforts with Butler County Against
Heroin, and both groups cite the influence of county law enforcement.
Several members of Soroptimist and several members of the anti-heroin
group were at informational meetings held within the last two years by
county Detective Pat Cannon, Butler police Lt. Tim Fennell and
District Attorney Tim McCune.

There's Hope

When Breightmyer ordered "Heroin Kills," she had no idea Carroll
County was so much like Butler.

She was thrilled to learn that her Carroll County counterparts were
not seeing teens in the emergency room from overdoes.

"This is great! I'm just so happy that I found that Web site," she
said. "RAD was so helpful, so cooperative. I think they would be there
to support anybody."

Though she knows nothing will stop heroin overnight, Breightmyer has
faith in Butler County's residents.

"This county can do this. They can lick this problem just like other
counties have."

[SIDEBAR]

FIGHTING HEROIN

Today: Getting the word out

Next Sunday: Law enforcement

Feb. 23: Treatment and rehabilitation