FORCE TAKES DRUGS TO TASK

WARREN - Law enforcement officials committed to curbing illegal drug use
are asking the community to help spread a preventive word.

In addition to creating a Web site, the Trumbull County Drug Task Force is
enlisting the help of high school art students who will soon compete to get
paintings or drawings on a billboard. The winner also will get a $500
savings bond.

"We want to advertise the Web site address and feature the winning artwork
on at least two billboards. It's a way of educating everyone," said Deputy
Jeff Orr, Task Force director.

The Task Force board, now headed by new chairman Chief Dan Faustino of
Brookfield and Chief Todd Coonce of Hubbard Township, approved last week
the renting of the billboard space.

"I'd like to get one on the east end and the west end of the (Ohio 5)
bypass," Orr said.

Orr is the seventh chief of the Task Force, that Sheriff Thomas Altiere
began in 1990. He says technology is helping the agency that is made up of
officer-liaisons from departments in Colum-biana, Portage and Trumbull
counties.

"We're also working now with Ashtabula, Geauga and Mercer (Pa.) County.
There's been a trend to focus more on the rural areas. That's where we're
seeing more activity. In the past, we concentrated on cities. And even
though that was successful, I think rural areas were neglected. Out there
drug activity is more hidden and less obvious," Orr said.

Orr said he expects the Web site to blossom into a vehicle that can accept
confidential information about drug deals while revealing the latest street
drugs.

Surfers can find the site at www.taskforce.co.trumbull.oh.us.

Currently, the site tells viewers about GHB, or gamma- hydroxybutrolactone.

"The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has recently pulled it off the
shelves since it was found to cause more than 100 deaths around the
country," Orr said. He pointed out that the steroid-like drug is more
common in college towns and around gyms where weightlifters once used it to
bulk up and get high.

Other drug alert pages on the site show students and parents photos of
drugs like ecstasy, marijuana, LSD, cocaine, heroin and OxyContin, an
addictive and potentially lethal painkiller the Task Force has targeted in
the last year.

A massive OxyContin bust by the Task Force in 2000 netted more than a dozen
arrests, including a woman who recently forfeited more than $70,000 in
illegal OxyContin sales. A doctor whose case is still pending stands to
lose a $150,000 piece of property that his practice is located on.

These forfeitures - along with funding from state and local sources - help
the Task Force's budget, allowing for the purchase of equipment and "buy
money" used by agents and informants.