Pubdate: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 Source: Recorder & Times, The (CN ON) Copyright: 2003 Recorder and Times Contact: http://www.recorder.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2216 Author: Megan Gillis GRAPHIC DISPLAY USED TO MAKE POINT ON ALCOHOL, DRUGS SMITHS FALLS -- A 17-year-old boy is dead and his friend charged with impaired driving causing death after two carloads of partying teens collided on the high school's doorstep. Horrified classmates arriving for school Thursday watched as firefighters cut the bloodied injured from the crumpled car, paramedics worked to revive them and police interviewed the distraught driver. That's how the story would read. But the dramatic car crash, a girl's cocaine overdose and a fight between two teens were staged by Smiths Falls District Collegiate Institute students and the Smiths Falls Community Focus Coalition with real police officers, paramedics and doctors. The Drug Awareness Week event aimed to show teens the consequences of the choices they make about alcohol, drugs and violence. Grade 12 student Mike Donohue was the "dead" youth, a shard of glass from the car's windshield sticking out of his bloodied temple. He recounted how he got into a car with his drunk friend and didn't buckle up. "Not that it matters now," he said. "The car is totalled and so am I." "Be aware of the consequences of doing drugs and drinking," Donohue said after the assembly. "It could happen to anybody." A second scenario had a teenage girl collapse, her friends telling teachers that she'd snorted a line of cocaine. Dr. Elspeth Kushnir told the teens that she's gotten used to trying to resuscitate people who have overdosed on drugs or alcohol or crashed a car but she will never get used to telling their families. "I can't tell you never to do any of these risky things," Kushnir told the students. "You're kids, you'll want to try. Look out for each other. Please don't let me be the one who has to call your mother." Kushnir noted that she's seen more cocaine at the town hospital than when she worked at a major Toronto health centre. Doctors now look at teens showing up with chest pains - a symptom of cocaine use - with suspicion. Users have no idea how toxic it is, she said. A single line could be enough to send a sensitive person into cardiac arrest and buyers have no way of knowing what's really in it. The scenarios weren't overblown, said Rick Warren, manager of the Smiths Falls ambulance base. All those incidents can, and have, resulted from a single field party. Four years ago, a devastating crash after a party sent two teens to city hospitals by ambulance. Many more party-goers turn up in the emergency room with overdoses, injuries from fights and requests for the morning-after pill. Alcohol is the number one substance teens are using, FOCUS co-ordinator Les Voakes said. Marijuana is number two and everything else is a distant third, Voakes said. - ------------------- Published in Section A, page 4 in the Friday, November 21, 2003 edition of the Brockville Recorder & Times. - --- MAP posted-by: Perry Stripling