OPERATION TEEN SAVE: AGENTS DECLARE WAR ON NEW DRUG WAVE

MUSCLE SHOALS - Don't count on a lecture when Alcoholic Beverage
Control Board agent Mike Reese tells children about the dangers of
drug abuse.

Reese, a 20-year-law enforcement veteran working narcotics cases,
visits schools with stories of teen-agers addicted to OxyContin or
dying from popular "club drugs."

At the 43 schools where his program Operation Teen Save have been
conducted, students in his audience sometimes cry after seeing
photographs of children like themselves in a coma or dead.

On Thursday, he brought that same dose of reality home to some 100
area police officers, educators and counselors attending a training
program at Northwest-Shoals Community College. The program is a
response to a growing problem with OxyContin and a new wave of rave
drugs taking root in Alabama.

Abuse of the prescription painkiller OxyContin and gamma
hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, a depressant the government banned 12 years
ago, have been blamed for dozens of rapes and deaths across the
state. OxyContin alone is linked to about 80 deaths in Alabama, he
said.

"Tell your daughters, all it takes is one capful to kill you," Reese
said, referring to GHB. "They could be raped for two days and not be
able to do anything about it."

Another ABC agent, Lt. Andy Hardy, a training and drug operations
coordinator based in Montgomery, said the new wave of drugs children
are exposed to are deadlier.

"Ten years ago, it could have been cocaine and marijuana," Hardy
said. "If you smoked pot, I could help you. Now, the severity of the
problem is that these drugs could literally kill you the first time
you use them."

Statewide, methamphetamine is among the most prevalent drug, he said.

Police often see some of the new wave of drugs in the club scene and
underground raves sometimes advertised on the Internet.

During his presentation, Reese talked about children across the
country who were killed, including Samantha Reid, a 15-year-old
Michigan girl who had GHB slipped into her soda at a party in 1999.

The odorless and colorless liquid has been used in date rapes and for
getting high.

Two of her school classmates were charged in connection with the death.

"We have to get to the ones who haven't started using drugs," Reese
said. "If you have kids, go talk to them about how prevalent it is."