IN HEROIN'S DEADLY GRIP

Parents Learn About Problem

In an extraordinary meeting marked with heated accusations, frustration and
tears, a standing-room-only crowd of Alexandria parents came together
Wednesday night to learn about heroin and what it's doing to their children.

Convened by Alexandria Police Chief Mike Ward in the wake of the overdose
death of 18-year-old Adam Messmer in early January, the meeting at the
Alexandria Fire Station was intended as a communitywide intervention --
first to come to grips with the reality of heroin in Alexandria and
surrounding rural areas of Campbell, Pendleton and Kenton counties, and
second, to try to find ways of attacking it.

Messmer was the third young man with a history of heroin abuse to die in
rural Northern Kentucky in recent months.

On Oct. 20, one of Messmer's close friends, Mark DeMarrero, 19, was found
dead at his parents' home in Melbourne of a suspected Oxy-(243) Contin
overdose. Two months earlier, Casey Wethington, 23, of Morning View, died
10 days after slipping into a heroin-induced coma.

The parents of all three were at Wednesday's meeting, as were nearly two
dozen other parents whose teens have struggled with heroin addiction or
continue to do so. It was an unprecedented gathering for Alexandria, which
in the past 12 years has grown from little more than a country crossroads
to a bustling bedroom community.

It is a community of people who live here because they never imagined they
would have to face the uglier issues associated with the big city. A crowd
of 450 of them, including law enforcement and school officials and parents,
heard:

* Dr. Mike Kalfas, medical director of the St. Luke Drug and Alcohol
Treatment Center, say that when he began working there in 1997, he saw only
sporadic cases of heroin addiction. But in the past six months, he said,
160 adults have checked into the center with heroin addictions. Fifty-five
percent of them were between 18 and 25.

* Campbell County High School senior Tony Schilling admit that he had used
heroin. Schilling drew applause when he exhorted parents to take
responsibility for their children.

"My mom never caught me -- I think she let a lot of stuff slide," he said.
"Parents, you gotta watch your kids. You gotta get in their faces. Too many
of you are being too nice to your kids. Adam and Mark, they were my
friends. I didn't want to be a hypocrite to my friends, and now they're gone."

* A half-dozen anguished parents tell of their teen-agers' struggles with
heroin. Said one mother whose 17-year-old daughter is in treatment: "I
should have seen her grades dropping. -- I saw how her hand would shake
when she combed her hair -- I saw how skinny she was getting.

"The first thing I did wrong was, I believed her when she told me she
wasn't on anything. Because I wanted to believe her."

Ward said there was a kit parents could get for free from the Campbell
County police to screen their children's urine for the presence of opiates,
including heroin, as well as other drugs.

* Campbell County Attorney Justin Verst tell them that "too many parents
have the opinion their child can do no wrong. Too many parents, when their
kids get in trouble, try to get them out."

And they heard Charlotte Wethington tell of her son's tragic descent into
heroin addiction -- and of her frustration at being unable to commit him to
a treatment program. Under state law, those over 18 with a drug addiction
can sign themselves out of treatment programs.

Mrs. Wethington is the driving force behind Kentucky House Bill 192, called
the Casey Wethington Act for Substance Abuse Intervention, that would
enable parents to put adult children into treatment against their will.

Mrs. Wethington told a riveting story of how her son entered one treatment
program after another, only to leave after a few days. She said she begged
program administrators to keep him in treatment: "Time and time again, they
refused. On June 25, Casey had been clean for 20 days. Then he overdosed a
second time. He told me he used heroin to celebrate going 20 days without
it. That's what this drug does to people. I prayed he would be arrested and
court-ordered into treatment.

"Finally, he was arrested in Indiana. Again, I begged the police to keep
him in jail. But he was released on his own recognizance.

"The letter from the court ordering him into treatment from his arrest
arrived on the day of his funeral."