I fucking hate these articles..
it sucks how they advocate reading kid's journals and searching their rooms...
here's the picture that went with it
Warning signs
Parents are learning that street drugs look like candy, and kids are ‘hiding’ them out in the open
By Kathy Lynn Gray THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ever look for ecstasy in your son’s Pez dispenser? How about that ever-present Chap Stick jammed in your daughter’s pocket?
Those are just two of the common hiding places for tablets of the illegal stimulant popular among teen-agers, narcotics detectives are warning parents, teachers and social workers.
Two undercover Franklin County deputies are laying out this type of practical information in a fourhour workshop dubbed Operation Street Smart. They hope the workshop will be a powerful weapon in the war against drugs, including ecstasy, a designer-drug variation of the hallucinogen mescaline and the stimulant amphetamine.
"You’ve got to be able to talk about drugs with kids, and you need to understand what you’re talking about,’’ Sgt. Mike Powell explained at a recent Street Smart session.
Teens who sprinkle their conversations with talk of rolls or rolling — as in "I’ve got Rolaids,’’ "I’ve got Tootsie Rolls’’ or even "I’m going Rollerblading’’ — may be talking about ecstasy, Powell said.
Roll is one of many names for the drug, also known as Y2K, 007, Smurf and Motorola.
"We try to cover all the new designer drugs and talk about the paraphernalia — the things you can look for to see if a child is on some type of drug,’’ detective David Hunt said.
Sunglasses might hide dilated pupils, a telltale sign of stimulant use, or the shrunken pupils that signal opiate use.
Baby pacifiers can signal ecstasy use: Users suck on them to reduce the teeth-grinding the drug causes.
"Mom and Dad see a pacifier around Junior’s neck, and they think: ‘Oh, that’s cute,’ ’’ Hunt said.
They might feel the same about Pixy Stix, which can be emptied and filled with ground-up ecstasy, Powell said.
A 16-year-old Dublin girl now in a drug-rehabilitation program said she hid her ecstasy inside Tylenol bottles, a mascara container (after removing the inside liner) and a small, metal container for jelly beans.
"If my mom had only looked in that jelly-bean container and seen that there weren’t jelly beans in there for years,’’ she lamented.
In the house, she hid it in holes in the wall and between ceiling rafters.
A 13-year-old Reynoldsburg boy who has smoked marijuana for a year said he hid the drug under the foil of his cigarette pack or in a secret pocket in his Fubu pants.
"It’s such a joke to hide it from parents,’’ the Dublin girl said. "Kids can’t believe how clueless parents are when it’s right in their face.’’
The idea for the Street Smart workshops evolved from a conversation between Steven Tucker, an officer with the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, and a seventh-grader who had brought marijuana to school.
"He was using terms like rolling and candy flipping, and I had no clue what he was talking about,’’ Tucker said. "So I immediately got on the phone to our narcotics guys, and they translated for me.’’
He then suggested that the narcotics deputies train DARE officers in drug lingo. The concept was so well-received that it grew into the Street Smart program, funded by a federal grant obtained by Franklin County.
Powell and Hunt first concentrated on training police and teachers but recently branched out to parent groups.
"It would have been very helpful when my son was younger,’’ said Danny Dahl, a 54-year-old caseworker with Children Services who sat through the workshop last month. "What surprised me is that a lot of these drugs are aimed at kids, and that scares me the most.’’
Although Powell and Hunt’s aim is not to frighten, stories they told last month of two central Ohio teens who died in October from mixtures of morphine and over-the-counter cough medicine numbed Kim Toler.
"As drug dealers become more crafty, we have to be aware of how they induce kids to use drugs,’’ said Toler of Grove City, who is director of adoptions for Children Services and a mother of two. "I’ll explain to my kids now how some drugs look like Nerds, and the Pez thing.’’
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, the number of eighth-graders who used marijuana doubled between 1991 and 2001 — to one in five from one in 10.
That’s how the Dublin girl began her 2
• years of drug usage. She smoked bud (marijuana) to fit in with the popular kids but quickly moved to beans (ecstasy) and then yayo (cocaine).
"Bud seemed like such a minor thing, but it was a gateway drug for me,’’ she said
.
Parents who used drugs in the 1960s and ’70s, Hunt said, can’t assume they understand today’s drug scene.
"Sixty to 70 percent of the drugs on the street, most adults did not have access to when they were in college. Even marijuana has changed — it’s even more potent than it was before.’’
Hunt urges parents to look for signals of drug use.
"Go through their rooms,’’ he said. "Read their diaries.’’
At one Street Smart session, he talked about a 17-year-old from New Albany who kept the LSD and marijuana he was selling in the top drawer of his bedroom dresser — along with wads of cash.
"His parents said that was his space,’’ Hunt said, "and they didn’t go in there.’’
The Dublin girl said parents should not adopt such an attitude.
"I don’t think random searches are very fair, but if they become suspicious, then they should search,’’ she said.
"One school administrator caught me and kind of looked the other way. I wish they hadn’t let me off so easily.’’
here's the article
it sucks how they advocate reading kid's journals and searching their rooms...
here's the picture that went with it
Warning signs
Parents are learning that street drugs look like candy, and kids are ‘hiding’ them out in the open
By Kathy Lynn Gray THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ever look for ecstasy in your son’s Pez dispenser? How about that ever-present Chap Stick jammed in your daughter’s pocket?
Those are just two of the common hiding places for tablets of the illegal stimulant popular among teen-agers, narcotics detectives are warning parents, teachers and social workers.
Two undercover Franklin County deputies are laying out this type of practical information in a fourhour workshop dubbed Operation Street Smart. They hope the workshop will be a powerful weapon in the war against drugs, including ecstasy, a designer-drug variation of the hallucinogen mescaline and the stimulant amphetamine.
"You’ve got to be able to talk about drugs with kids, and you need to understand what you’re talking about,’’ Sgt. Mike Powell explained at a recent Street Smart session.
Teens who sprinkle their conversations with talk of rolls or rolling — as in "I’ve got Rolaids,’’ "I’ve got Tootsie Rolls’’ or even "I’m going Rollerblading’’ — may be talking about ecstasy, Powell said.
Roll is one of many names for the drug, also known as Y2K, 007, Smurf and Motorola.
"We try to cover all the new designer drugs and talk about the paraphernalia — the things you can look for to see if a child is on some type of drug,’’ detective David Hunt said.
Sunglasses might hide dilated pupils, a telltale sign of stimulant use, or the shrunken pupils that signal opiate use.
Baby pacifiers can signal ecstasy use: Users suck on them to reduce the teeth-grinding the drug causes.
"Mom and Dad see a pacifier around Junior’s neck, and they think: ‘Oh, that’s cute,’ ’’ Hunt said.
They might feel the same about Pixy Stix, which can be emptied and filled with ground-up ecstasy, Powell said.
A 16-year-old Dublin girl now in a drug-rehabilitation program said she hid her ecstasy inside Tylenol bottles, a mascara container (after removing the inside liner) and a small, metal container for jelly beans.
"If my mom had only looked in that jelly-bean container and seen that there weren’t jelly beans in there for years,’’ she lamented.
In the house, she hid it in holes in the wall and between ceiling rafters.
A 13-year-old Reynoldsburg boy who has smoked marijuana for a year said he hid the drug under the foil of his cigarette pack or in a secret pocket in his Fubu pants.
"It’s such a joke to hide it from parents,’’ the Dublin girl said. "Kids can’t believe how clueless parents are when it’s right in their face.’’
The idea for the Street Smart workshops evolved from a conversation between Steven Tucker, an officer with the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, and a seventh-grader who had brought marijuana to school.
"He was using terms like rolling and candy flipping, and I had no clue what he was talking about,’’ Tucker said. "So I immediately got on the phone to our narcotics guys, and they translated for me.’’
He then suggested that the narcotics deputies train DARE officers in drug lingo. The concept was so well-received that it grew into the Street Smart program, funded by a federal grant obtained by Franklin County.
Powell and Hunt first concentrated on training police and teachers but recently branched out to parent groups.
"It would have been very helpful when my son was younger,’’ said Danny Dahl, a 54-year-old caseworker with Children Services who sat through the workshop last month. "What surprised me is that a lot of these drugs are aimed at kids, and that scares me the most.’’
Although Powell and Hunt’s aim is not to frighten, stories they told last month of two central Ohio teens who died in October from mixtures of morphine and over-the-counter cough medicine numbed Kim Toler.
"As drug dealers become more crafty, we have to be aware of how they induce kids to use drugs,’’ said Toler of Grove City, who is director of adoptions for Children Services and a mother of two. "I’ll explain to my kids now how some drugs look like Nerds, and the Pez thing.’’
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, the number of eighth-graders who used marijuana doubled between 1991 and 2001 — to one in five from one in 10.
That’s how the Dublin girl began her 2
• years of drug usage. She smoked bud (marijuana) to fit in with the popular kids but quickly moved to beans (ecstasy) and then yayo (cocaine).
"Bud seemed like such a minor thing, but it was a gateway drug for me,’’ she said
.
Parents who used drugs in the 1960s and ’70s, Hunt said, can’t assume they understand today’s drug scene.
"Sixty to 70 percent of the drugs on the street, most adults did not have access to when they were in college. Even marijuana has changed — it’s even more potent than it was before.’’
Hunt urges parents to look for signals of drug use.
"Go through their rooms,’’ he said. "Read their diaries.’’
At one Street Smart session, he talked about a 17-year-old from New Albany who kept the LSD and marijuana he was selling in the top drawer of his bedroom dresser — along with wads of cash.
"His parents said that was his space,’’ Hunt said, "and they didn’t go in there.’’
The Dublin girl said parents should not adopt such an attitude.
"I don’t think random searches are very fair, but if they become suspicious, then they should search,’’ she said.
"One school administrator caught me and kind of looked the other way. I wish they hadn’t let me off so easily.’’
here's the article
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