Pubdate: Sun, 17 Mar 2002
Source: Centre Daily Times (PA)
Copyright: 2002 Nittany Printing and Publishing Co., Inc.
Contact:  http://www.centredaily.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/74
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

A LOT OF TASKS AWAIT A NEW DRUG TASK FORCE

What lingered most strongly after Thursday's summit meeting of Centre 
County leaders on heroin use was Ferguson County police Chief Ed Connor's 
call for a more coordinated community effort to fight the addiction -- not 
at Thursday's meeting, but in December 1999, when the CDT interviewed him 
in the wake of a wave of drug arrests and overdoses.

"Law enforcement has to work closer with health-care providers and with 
schools," he said then, so the sense of deja vu that many people may have 
felt on Thursday when people spoke of the need for more cooperation and 
education should be forgiven.

In fact, that is what is exasperating about the whole war on drugs in 
central Pennsylvania. It's been almost three years since the creation of 
the Centre County Drug Task Force, which promised, in Attorney General Mike 
Fisher's words, "a newly coordinated effort to stamp out drug dealing in 
this county." While the task force can point to some successes, 
particularly in arresting dealers, it still feels as if we're simply 
treading water.

The evidence is in the admissions by local leaders that education efforts 
put forth so far haven't been enough, or in concerns expressed in some 
quarters that the intervention and treatment services available in the 
county aren't sufficient.

It's also in the fact, which many residents might find surprising, that the 
county doesn't have a systematic way to accurately gauge the magnitude of 
the heroin problem. While drug task force officials said at a news 
conference on Feb. 28 that there had been five heroin overdoses in Centre 
County since Feb. 1, there may have been others that were unreported. 
Incidents such as the death of 17-year-old John F. Gingerich II in late 
February, which police believe was due to a heroin overdose, are left as 
our best indicators of the scope of the problem.

So, here we are again, with a call for a community drug task force that 
would work in conjunction with the already existing drug enforcement task 
force.

Centre County Commissioners Keith Bierly and Connie Lucas have offered 
their office as the hub of such a task force, and that seems to be the best 
place to begin. It should include all of the sectors that were present at 
the summit meeting -- law enforcement, treatment providers, public school 
and Penn State representatives, health care officials and county social 
service officials -- and citizens committed to making an impact in the drug 
war at the community level.

Such a task force will have a busy agenda. It should:

Develop more visible and more effective education programs targeted at 
potential youth users and their parents. Young potential users need to be 
shown that drugs such as heroin have devastating consequences. Parents and 
other adults in contact with youths need to be aware of the signs of 
potential abuse and shown ways to respond.

Work with institutions such as Centre Community Hospital to implement a 
drug-overdose reporting system so that the community has better information 
on the scope of the problem.

Better publicize the county's existing prevention and treatment resources. 
Dave King, supervisor at Clear Concepts Counseling Inc., a firm that 
provides outpatient drug-abuse treatment under contract with Centre County, 
guesses that more than 90 percent of county residents don't know who to 
call if they or someone they know has a drug problem.

Raise questions about whether new treatment options are needed within the 
county. For example, with the increase in heroin use in Centre County, 
should the closest option for methadone treatment be more than 90 minutes 
away in Harrisburg?

Assess how the county's police resources can be more effectively mobilized 
to fight drug trafficking. That process has already begun with a meeting of 
police chiefs this past Friday.

Most importantly, the task force should continuing lifting the veil of 
denial and apathy that keeps falling over the drug-abuse issue in the 
county. It shouldn't take a disaster on the scale of what's currently 
happening in Allegheny County -- a drug overdose death every other day, the 
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported March 14 -- to galvanize our community to 
action.

Yet, there is a real fear that we'll set ourselves up for just such an 
eventuality -- followed by yet another session of hand-wringing at yet 
another summit.
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MAP posted-by: Jackl