Pubdate: Thu, 01 Nov 2012
Source: Chico News & Review, The (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsreview.com/chico/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/559
Author: Shannon Rooney

KEEPING KIDS SAFE

Advice Offered on How to Keep Children Healthy and Away From Drugs

Parents today have more to worry about than just alcohol and 
cigarettes, although those vices remain areas of deep concern. Now 
parents also have to agonize over new "designer drugs," such as bath 
salts, which are starting to show up in Butte County.

In an effort to educate parents about how to keep kids healthy and 
safe, Partners4Health presented the two-hour symposium "Kids Living 
Shorter Lives?!" last Saturday (Oct. 27) at Chico's Enloe Conference 
Center. Partners4Health is made up of representatives from the Butte 
County Tobacco Prevention Coalition, Center for Nutrition and 
Activity Promotion and Butte Youth Now Coalition.

The high attendance suggested the community wants information on the 
several topics discussed. Raul Raygoza of the Butte County Public 
Health Department welcomed the crowd and said, "I encourage you all 
to take a role in this and bring it to your households."

The symposium allowed parents and others to listen to people who are 
working in the community to deal with a range of issues, including 
childhood obesity, that if unaddressed could lead to the current 
generation of children living shorter lives than their parents. If 
this happened, it would be the first time in decades the lifespan 
trend reversed.

Perhaps the most compelling talk of the two-hour symposium came from 
Dr. Alex Stalcup of the New Leaf Treatment Center in Lafayette. 
Stalcup has worked for close to a decade in Butte County, helping 
social services, public health, law enforcement and schools get on 
the same page in addressing the epidemic of the abuse of prescription 
and other drugs and what parents can do to help addicted children.

Stalcup framed his talk with hope, saying he's "optimistic about the 
[scientific] understanding of alcohol and drugs and our [current] 
interventions with them." He emphasized science and medicine have 
stepped up and provided the needed information, teasing apart "what 
addiction is and how to treat it." Studies done in the last decade 
give us a lot of reason to be hopeful, he said.

Stalcup gave an overview of drug and alcohol issues in Butte County, 
taking note of the long-festering methamphetamine problem. Meth is 
still one of the most toxic drugs in Butte County, he said, with 50 
percent of drug addicts seeking treatment naming meth as their 
primary drug. He also discussed the "pleasure/reward" centers in the 
human brain and how drugs act upon them. "Addiction is a disease of 
pleasure," he said. Where kids are concerned, "Addiction is a 
pediatric disease."

For the past several years, Stalcup said, there's been a growing 
problem locally with opiate addiction in the form of prescription 
drugs, such as hydrocodone (Vicodin, Lortab, Norco) and others. He 
mentioned Adderall (a prescription drug commonly used to treat ADD 
and ADHD), and said there are "lots of Adderall sales all the way 
down to the fifth or sixth grade." He also covered MDMA (Ecstasy) and 
cannabis, saying the Northern California medical-marijuana culture 
that has sprung up has unfortunately normalized the use of cannabis 
among young people and minimized the drug's potentially deleterious 
effects, in spite of new evidence of the drug's addicting nature.

"People who create drugs are constantly coming up with new designer 
drugs," Stalcup said, one of the most disturbing of which is bath salts.

"It's a new problem," he said. "I hope we can get ahead of ... the 
problems bath salts are causing."

He said there are more than 190 forms of bath salts, and the people 
who create them "tweak molecules" and come out with new ones 
literally every week.

"One gets made illegal, and the cooker (drug maker) just comes up 
with a new variation," he said, "or they just repackage the same 
thing (they had made previously) and sell it." He said bath salts 
originated in the Horn of Africa, derived from a stimulant plant 
called kaht, and they're "hitting the U.S. like a wave." This "new 
horror of drugs," Stalcup said, can be purchased-legally-in Chico, 
and there are no existing ways to detect bath salts by urinalysis.

In closing, Stalcup repeated his optimism in science's and medicine's 
strides in addressing the disease of addiction, and he praised a drug 
called Suboxone, used now to treat opiate addiction, as "a gift from god."

Other symposium speakers included Elizabeth Newton of KLEAN (Kids 
Leading Everyone Against Tobacco), who shared a PowerPoint 
presentation titled "Tobacco Through the Lens of Our Youth: A 
Photovoice Project." Butte County Behavioral Health representative 
Ryan Gulbrandsen presented "Parent and Athlete Committed," while 
Kelly Doty of the Center for Nutrition and Activity Promotion shared 
"Know Your Environment," information for families who want to learn 
about nutrition and exercise.

Butte County Sheriff's Office representative Paula Felipe discussed 
"Internet Safety by Butte County Sheriff's Crime Prevention Unit, 
Cyber-Safety and Kids." Butte County Office of Education's Bruce 
Baldwin talked about ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills 
Training) and suicide prevention intervention and said there are 
upcoming trainings for people interested in becoming suicide 
prevention community caregivers. To register, call 891-2850.
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