Pubdate: Sun, 24 Jul 2005
Source: York Daily Record (PA)
Copyright: 2005 The York Daily Record
Contact:  http://www.ydr.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/512
Author: Brent Burkey

DRUGS HAVE LONG REACH

Rural Community Confronts Issue, Seeks Solutions

Jim Brownman called his time under the Norman Wood Bridge a natural buzz.

The two-lane expanse of Route 372 crosses more than 100 feet above the
Susquehanna River, connecting York and Lancaster counties and giving passing
drivers a view of a wilderness paradise.

This summer, the river is a series of small pools split by groves of scrubby
trees bent, from times of high flows, toward the nearby Maryland border. On
a day in June, the sun glinted off the seemingly still water as a lone
fisherman cast a line.

A few hundred yards away, an eagle nested near Lock 12, where families
enjoyed afternoon picnicking. A mile south, constant traffic flowed in and
out of a boat ramp.

Brownman sat under the bridge with a friend from college, two piers from the
York County side.

The native of Lancaster County has been coming here since his sophomore year
at Penn Manor High School. The incredible view, he said, helps him think.

"It's the greatest natural high you'll ever have," said Brownman, after he
climbed back from the bridge's catwalk.

But take a 15-minute drive to Kennard-Dale High School, and the focus is on
a different high.

This spring, several parents told the South Eastern School District's
administration that their kids were scared to go to school, Assistant Supt.
Tracy Shank said.

They were afraid of drugs, and the people doing them.

Those fears were backed up at the end of the school year by a survey that
said junior and seniors saw drugs as a serious problem at the school.

Older students didn't want their younger brothers and sisters exposed to it.

In response, Supt. Thomas McShane sent a letter home to parents, detailing
those concerns and other rumors he heard about some students' dangerous
behavior while under the influence, including a "car surfing" incident where
someone rode on top of a moving vehicle.

Since then, drug dogs have sniffed their way through lockers, and parents
have met by the dozen in school-sponsored events with former addicts and
drug counselors. One student was expelled for a year when drugs were found
in his locker, McShane said.

Holly Tillman, 14, leans in to get a better look at a drug and alcohol
presentation while sitting beside her mother, Debbie, in the Kennard-Dale
High School auditorium. bigger version & more photos (3) But a former
addict, drug counselors and law enforcement say the new reactions are to an
old problem.

They say the southeastern part of the county is no different from anywhere
else. People get high on whatever is available. They always have and
probably always will. Thin police coverage and rural, close-knit drug
cultures only aggravate the problem as users everywhere turn to drugs that
give them better highs.

Strong weed

Brownman, standing near a pot leaf spray-painted onto Norman Wood's western
support, said the marijuana from the area is no secret - even from cities
that many associate with "real" drug problems.

"I know a guy in Baltimore who asked me, 'Did you ever hear of Delta?'" said
Brownman, puzzled at how someone from the big city would know about the
700-person town.

The reason: Skunkweed. It's described as marijuana that gives you a
better-than-average high.

Local law enforcement is familiar with the term.

At Stewartstown Borough Police Department headquarters - a converted
basement with a few cubicles and a couple side rooms - Chief Charles Reid
said he's also come across the phrase - and the drug.

Sitting at his front desk, he paged through photos of marijuana.

The pot was growing in area cornfields, within five miles of the borough,
and found during a helicopter sweep.

Reid, graying after nearly two decades as chief, has dark hair in the last
picture. He's standing behind a pile of marijuana plants gathered a decade
ago. The find barely fits in his pickup.

"I bet I was the envy of every kid in the neighborhood," Reid says with a
laugh.

Larry Bailets has been the school resource officer at South Eastern for more
than three years. He said he has never seen anything but pot in the high
school and never more than a gram at a time.

But that's not to say other drugs aren't around, he said.

It's more than just skunkweed

Now, some are also dabbling in another "better high."

"Heroin is coming back like candy," said Stewartstown police Officer Richard
Cunningham.

And it's popped up in South Eastern rumors.

Capt. David F. Young is the director of the drug law enforcement division of
the Pennsylvania State Police. He said heroin has been getting cheaper and
increasingly purer since the mid-1990s.

South American drug dealers are taking over the heroin business in the
eastern United States, Young said. They've undercut Asian dealers by selling
a purer product and using the infrastructure built through the cocaine trade
to bring large amounts of heroin into the United States.

"You're talking about a free-market society," Young said.

The result has been heroin as cheap as marijuana and pure enough to get a
user high by either snorting or smoking it, taking away the needle stigma.
Both have increased its use among young people.

The biggest problem, Cunningham said, is still in cities like Baltimore,
where he was a police officer before retiring and moving to Stewartstown. He
said anyone who thinks drugs are an epidemic in southeastern York County
should go to Baltimore to see a real problem.

There, dealers sell heroin to strangers in daylight. They pay rent to gang
members from their street corners, Cunningham said.

But with Baltimore a short drive away, it is not hard for people in southern
York County to take advantage of those dealers, then bring it back to more
rural areas where it is easier to hide use.

"It's done in areas here under the cloak of night or out where no one thinks
they are going to get caught," said

Bailets, who also patrols the streets of Stewartstown when school is out.
Just because people don't see it doesn't mean it isn't here, he said.

Methamphetamine is also coming on strong, Young said. Labs, like the one
allegedly run by two people in a Collinsville-area mobile home, are popping
up all over the state.

They are not a major problem like heroin yet, Young said, but the problem is
coming. There is a market for new drugs.

Boredom sets in

Her clients tell her they are bored in the rural area and getting high is
the escape, said Josephine Kalista, a drug and alcohol counselor working in
the Delta office of Adams-Hanover Counseling Services. Many of the drug
users she counsels - some as young as 14 - said they would leave home on a
Saturday night, telling their parents they were going to the local swimming
hole or some other innocent-sounding place.

It wouldn't raise any red flags with their moms and dads.

"People think that since there are farms around, there are no drug and
alcohol problems - but there are," Kalista said.

Kalista said the branch office has been open in Delta for about 15 years.
The need for counseling has always been throughout York County.

"Over there in Delta is no different," Kalista said.

Parties happen in the middle of nowhere.

On one Saturday night in June, a cluster of cars along a wooded roadway in
Lower Chanceford Township marks the entrance to a dirt path winding back to
the Susquehanna River.

There, partying teens gathered around small bonfires, and strangers were not
welcomed. Many stumbled, with slurred words. One admitted he was drunk and
high. Another rushed around at the sight of visitors, making sure no one
said their names.

Manpower and the Mason-Dixon

Downtown Delta, Saturday night, and Trooper Richard Drum was pulled over on
Main Street with Constable Stephen Paulus.

Drum was debating whether to take a suspect to be arraigned in Hanover -
where a district justice was on call for the night - or leave him for later.

Earlier in his shift, he told a teen he caught with alcohol and a marijuana
pipe to turn himself in at a later date and time. Drum didn't have time make
an arrest because the trooper would have to drive too far to process the
teen.

"Taking someone into custody, you're screwed."

Stewartstown is the only local police department in southeastern York
County. Other boroughs and townships rely on the Pennsylvania State Police,
stationed more than 20 miles away in Loganville.

On this particular night, from Red Lion to the Maryland line, and from
Interstate 83 to the Susquehanna, Drum was the only cop in town.

"Everyone down here knows how big an area I have tonight," Drum said.

Drum said state police rely on a computer program call Prophecy, which helps
trooper map patrol routes based on crimes in the past.

The program was one of several computer initiatives funded in with 2004
budget money also considered for hiring more troopers, said Jack Lewis,
spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Police. Lewis said the program is meant
to free up troopers behind desks, who would spend their time dispatching
other troopers to scenes.

"You're really trying to react to any trends that may be developing," Lewis
said.

Drum said the practice clusters troopers in certain areas where most crime
happens. He said troopers then are not in other areas, seeing incidents in
places like Delta. Also, if residents don't see a police presence, they
aren't going to report crimes.

"Those facts aren't put into the computer," Drum said. "We aren't down here
10 percent of what we should be."

The man who is down there is Paulus, who was greeted by an aging Chevrolet
Cavalier and two young adults as he stood along Main Street.

"What's up, Paulus?" one of the men yelled as they drove passed.

"I probably dealt with them before," said Paulus, who functions as the
closest thing to a local cop in Delta.

As a constable, his job is to arrest people for district justices. He said
the Maryland border, which separates Delta from adjoining Cardiff, Md., is a
hardship for law enforcement. "Once your jurisdiction stops, people know
it," Paulus said.

People with warrants out for their arrest on drug charges can sit less than
a mile away. It's not worth extradition procedures with Maryland.

"If you hop across the state line, there is nothing I can do," Paulus said.

Delta has considered hiring a police officer, said Maxine Moul, borough
secretary and treasurer. But set among the stacks of paper in her new office
space - the borough used to be run out of officials' homes - she said it
would take two-thirds of the municipal budget to pull it off.

"The liability insurance alone is $100,000," she said.

School taxes on borough residents went up about 33 percent this year. Many
people on fixed incomes - especially elderly homeowners - can't afford it,
Moul said, so they are moving out.

And many property buyers are from Baltimore, wanting to capitalize on the
cheaper housing and rent rates in Pennsylvania, Moul said.

It's a magnet for users and dealers from Maryland who don't hold jobs.

"You can't afford to keep a house, so they rent," Paulus said.

Moul said rentals cause much of the blight she and other officials are
trying to combat.

The borough now has a law on the books to stop older, Victorian-style homes
from being converted into rental units. They are also working on ideas to
stop residential houses from being converted, Moul said.

The South Eastern School District is also trying different tactics. The drug
awareness meetings this spring, which are continuing through the summer, are
districtwide. Shank said that, in the past, meetings would be for just
students or parents with children in specific grades.

They were poorly attended.

"That's why we went a little more public in the spring," Shank said.

The meetings are now part of a combined effort, including a tip line through
the Stewartstown Borough Police Department and a plan to designate five
people each from Delta, Stewartstown and Fawn Grove to act as "key
communicators" to report incidents to police.

At the district's June 22 meeting, the ideas were discussed before a drug
counselor showed about 70 people, most concerned parents, a video on the
dangers of everything from marker fumes to the way beer commercials attract
teens and make them think drinking is OK.

A former heroin addict, however, stood in the back and shook his head. He
said videos won't do it. Those like him needed to speak to the kids, tell
them how much getting high could screw up their lives.

The man had spoken at a previous meeting but would not give his name. He was
worried about the people he used to shoot up with, the people he still sees
every day living in one of the county's small towns.

It is the close-knit, small-town environment that may hinder drug efforts
the most, Cunningham said.

He said many will sell only to friends or people they know. Everyone knowing
everyone in the community is turned against the police, making it impossible
for undercover officers to infiltrate.

Reid said a drug enforcement agent from Philadelphia tried once years ago -
but no one had grown up with him, so he didn't get very far. The local
officers especially can't work undercover. It is impossible for Reid, who's
well known locally. He said he's constantly stopped by residents whenever he
is shopping with his wife or just enjoying his weekend.

Residents also keep quiet.

Paulus also said he knows who's dealing in the Delta area and who's using.
So do many others. But often, he said, it just stays rumor; there isn't
enough time or personnel for police to make proper busts and build cases.

Cunningham said the mentality hurts drug enforcement the most.

"It makes your area look bad if people think there is heroin in your area,"
he said.

By the numbers

Between July 2003 and June 2004, 1,856 York County residents were treated in
drug and alcohol facilities across the state, according to the latest
statistics from the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Alcohol addiction was
the leading reason, with heroin coming in second. More residents under 25
were treated for heroin addiction than alcohol addiction, according to the
statistics.

REASON FOR TREATMENT

Alcohol: 761

Heroin: 502

Cocaine/Crack: 288

Marijuana/Hashish: 249

Other: 56

TREATED AND UNDER 25

Marijuana/Hashish: 147

Heroin: 146

Alcohol: 105

Crack/Cocaine: 36

Other: 15
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