HEROIN A PROBLEM IN VALLEY SCHOOLS, POLICE OFFICIAL SAYS

Heroin a problem in Valley schools, police official says Tammy
Krikorian, Tribune Parents leaving Gilbert's annual drug prevention
seminar Thursday night felt prepared to begin a conversation with
their kids about drugs.

"I think I became complacent thinking I know my kids," said Kay
Warfield, a parent of children, ages 7, 10 and 13.

Warfield was among a crowd of about 250 people -- most of them
concerned parents and residents -- who attended the two-hour seminar
at Gilbert Unified School District's Mesquite Junior High. School
officials said they hold the annual meeting to raise awareness to
combat the problem.

"This problem cannot be resolved by schools alone," said
Superintendent Brad Barrett. "It cannot be resolved by parents alone.
We need each other."

The seminar began with a presentation by Chris Zamora, who works in
the narcotics division of the Gilbert Police Department, followed by
a presentation by Sarah Christensen from notMYkid.org.

Zamora told parents a brief history of various street drugs,
explaining what they look like, the effects, the paraphernalia and
different names.

"Heroin is something we're seeing like crazy," Zamora said. "A lot of
the cases we're working in our unit are (related to) heroin."

The type of heroin typically found in the East Valley is black tar
heroin, which users sometimes place on tinfoil, heat it and produce
fumes that can be inhaled to get high. On the street, it's called
"chasing the dragon."

"If you see discarded pieces of tinfoil, open it up and see what it
looks like inside," Zamora said. If there are black streaks or lines,
it was probably used for heroin.

The audience was surprised when Christensen showed several photos of
teens smoking marijuana with pipes, bongs or other paraphernalia. She
told them she got all the pictures from the social networking site,
MySpace.com.

Christensen also showed various paraphernalia and the ways teens
stash them: pipes made to look like a high-lighter pen or lipstick
tube, plus hollowed-out candles, books and VHS tapes where drugs or
tools for getting high can be stored.

Christensen advised parents to create a family drug prevention plan.

Parents should be educated, communicate with their children, be
consistent, and know their children's friends and their friends'
parents, she said.

Some other prevention tools, she said, are home breath analyzers and
drug test kits.

Larry and DeAnn Kettenring said when they got home they planned to
check their medicine cabinets and start discussing drugs with their
elementary school-age children.

"I didn't think I had to worry about it yet," DeAnn Kettenring said.