Viewpoints

Heroin's devastating effects touch our towns

Editorial published in the March 10, 2013,  edition of The Mercury.

Heroin is one of the most highly addictive drugs in our society, typically thought of as the drug of junkies living on the streets.
But this morphine derivative has migrated beyond city streets into the suburbs. Suburban teenagers experimenting with pills from the medicine cabinet are graduating to heroin. Some inhale the powder; others dissolve and inject it. Either way, the addiction is lethal.
Heroin is in our communities, and it’s killing our children.
The effects of heroin addiction are far reaching. When area homes are burglarized and valuables stolen, 90 percent of the time the crimes are to feed drug addiction, police say. More than any other drugs, opioid and heroin users turn to crime for the cash or tradeable items they need to feed their habit.
The drug is so highly addictive that young people steal from their families, sell precious belongings and then turn to burglarizing homes or businesses. Addicts lose all sense of personal safety, traveling to Philadelphia to buy drugs and shooting up along the Schuylkill Expressway.
There were 40 heroin deaths in Montgomery County last year, a number that police and coroner’s office workers say is growing. And those deaths are increasingly in families and schools once thought immune to this kind of addiction.
“Years ago you would think about a heroin addict as a junkie. You would think about some older person who is addicted to this and they’re kind of wandering around out of it all the time. Now, we’re just seeing a different kind of customer, younger and not necessarily aware of the dangers,” said Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman.
And as it grows, more families are being affected. “If I could say just one thing to someone (about this addiction), it would be, ‘Don’t say this couldn’t be my kid’,” said a local woman whose 28-year-old son died of a heroin overdose.
Awareness about the dangers that lurk in the medicine cabinets of many homes is a first step to confronting the potential for opioid addiction.
One minor surgery or visit to an emergency room can result in painkillers sent home to be left unused and available for abuse.
Once a person starts using pills, more visits to doctors and more prescriptions take the user further down the path to addiction. Those abusing pills turn to heroin when they can no longer afford or get enough of a high from pills.
Preventing that path from ever beginning is the first, best line of defense against addiction, Ferman says. Police departments in cooperation with the Drug Enforcement Administration now sponsor drug giveback days for safe disposal of unused prescription drugs.
Just last week Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams announced a drop box disposal program that will allow Berks County residents to discard unused or unwanted medication year round at township buildings. The goal is to reduce “access to addictive medications for accidental or intentional misuse by children or others in the home,” according to the district attorney’s announcement.
For those struggling with addiction, it’s important to know they can get help. Many counties, including Chester and Montgomery, sponsor drug court, where people who have committed crimes related to drugs are treated in an intensive rehabilitation setting. Nationwide, 75 percent of those who complete drug court remain arrest-free for two years.
Montgomery County offers detox, counseling and rehab through its drug and alcohol programs, and halfway or recovery houses help addicts maintain a clean lifestyle. The Pottstown methadone clinic run by Habit OPCO gives addicts the chance to beat addiction without the debilitating physical effects of heroin withdrawal.
In pharmacies, programs are being used to cross-check medications and prevent over prescription and pill abuse.
But more can be done by raising the awareness of parents, schools and doctors.
Heroin is a killer that pays no mind to gender, age or socioeconomic status.
Recognizing heroin as a threat right here and now in our town is the first step to beating it.


Series offers grim reminder to parents: This could be me

In the years I've been in the news business, I've edited stories about crime and tragedy involving young people, sometimes thinking, "Not my child. This could never be me ..."
One of the hardest parts of editing our series, "Fatal Addiction," is the awful truth that this could be me.
Or my child.
Or anyone I know.
***
The path to addiction recounted by the people interviewed in this series often began with painkillers prescribed by a doctor for an injury or anxiety.
What parent of a teenager hasn't made a fair share of doctor or emergency room visits, stopping at a pharmacy on the way home, per the doctor's orders? "When our kids are hurt or sick, we tell them to take their medicine," said Coleen Watchorn in the interviews conducted for this series. "We're doing what we think we're supposed to do as parents."
That medicine can become habit-forming, or it can lead to friends or other family using the leftover prescribed pills to experiment. Addiction comes later.
Coleen and her friend Kathy Mackie shared their stories with us as parents who watched their sons fight and lose their battles with addiction. These mothers spoke to us knowing that some people might judge them poorly. But they were adamant that they wanted to speak out and help others who may be going through a similar experience.
They sought a greater good from their grief -- a mission to discuss heroin publicly, to confront the reality that opioids are a threat to all our children.
Their courage to be candid has been inspiring for all of us involved in this series.
In my case, their stories have touched close to home.
***
My younger son was an active, athletic, risk-taking child from the time he could walk. Through middle school and high school, when sports became his passion, those trips to the doctor and emergency room were frequent.
Doctors prescribed pills for sports anxiety, pills for better concentration, pills for pain, pills for every ailment encountered.
Add the social pressure of peers, and the threat of abuse is obvious.
Reading these stories, I was frequently struck by a stark reality: "This could have been my child."
***
Trying to understand how heroin addiction can invade a family and rob a fine young man of his future and parents of their child was the most difficult part of editing this series, particularly because I know one of the families.
I attend church with the Mackies. Kathy and I were confirmed in the same class as teens and served on consistory together as adults. My husband and I chose Bob Mackie as confirmation mentor for our oldest son.
This series is about people we know who live good lives and who did everything right as parents -- and then suffered a loss no parent should have to bear.
This could be any of us; this could be our children.
Pills and heroin are a real threat in our towns. The goal of this series was to bring that truth into the open and prevent more lives from being lost.

Nancy March is Editor of The Mercury. Read more on her blog "The Editor's Desk" at http://merceditorsdesk.blogspot.com