“NOT MY KID?” EXPERTS SAY SURGE IN HEROIN USE IMPACTS ENTIRE COMMUNITY

Deerfield High School program March 4 offers insights on keeping teens safe in a new age of cheaper, easily accessible and more deadly drugs

Recent headlines have underscored the harsh reality that heroin and opiate abuse is on the rise in Lake County and around the country. A number of factors have converged to cause this alarming surge: wide availability, a cost that's less than alcohol or marijuana, skyrocketing increases in prescriptions for highly-addictive painkillers, and the elimination of needles for heroin, in favor of smoking or snorting this increasingly potent and potentially deadly drug. In Lake County alone, heroin-related deaths have increased by 115% from 2007 to 2011, according to an Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy study.

On Tuesday, March 4, Deerfield Parent Network (DPN) and Parents. The Anti-Drug (PTAD) bring a panel presentation to the community to address this problem head on.  The program, "Not My Kid!" will be held at Deerfield High School’s (DHS) North Café at 7 p.m.; the program is free and open to the entire community, but is especially geared to parents. Educating parents on the reality of what their teens are exposed to on the North Shore when it comes to drugs and alcohol, and how to keep them safe, will be discussed by a panel of experts, including Lake County State's Attorney Mike Nerheim; Laura Parise, M.D. and Maura Mooney, LSW, CADC, substance abuse treatment professionals at NorthShore University HealthSystem; DHS Principal Audris Griffith and HPHS Principal Brad Swanson; DHS Resource Officer Anthony Kropp, and a former DHS student, now a recovering addict.

“The fact that this problem has hit hard so close to home is a call to action for the entire community,” says DHS Principal Griffith.

Susie Wexler, Deerfield parent and PTAD board member, will serve as moderator for the panel.  Topics to be covered include: impact of the new medical marijuana laws in Illinois; the latest scientific and medical information about substance abuse and how to both treat and prevent it; what really happens when teens are caught using drugs or alcohol in our community; what the latest Illinois Youth Survey statistics tell us about this issue; the extent of and response to the heroin problem in Lake County; and what parents need to know now to keep their teens safe in the future.  For further information about this program, please visit www.deerfieldparentnetwork.org or www.parentstheantidrug.org