'Progress made' in Portage teen drug-abuse fight
By Julie Mack | Kalamazoo Gazette
October 27, 2009, 11:43PM
PORTAGE — A year ago, Portage was a community wracked by concern over a string of heroin-overdose deaths among teens and young adults.On Tuesday, about 50 people gathered to celebrate the efforts in addressing the issue of teen substance abuse since then.
“Wow. What a difference that a year and a community can make,” Portage Mayor Pete Strazdas said at the gathering at Portage City Hall.
“It’s better today than it was a year ago, no doubt about that,” Strazdas said. “There’s still work to be done, but significant progress has been made.”
Among the data reported Tuesday, illegal substances found at Portage high schools has declined. Also, a host of new prevention and education programs have begun, including various efforts aimed at local alcohol retailers, pharmacies and parents.
The issue of substance abuse surfaced in June 2008 after 18-year-old Amy Bousfield died of a heroin overdose three weeks after graduating from Portage Central High School.
Later that summer, the Kalamazoo Gazette reported that 12 teenagers or young adults had died of opiate-related overdoses in Kalamazoo County from January 2007 to August 2008. That was more overdose deaths in that age group than during the previous four years combined. Heroin was involved in four of the deaths, and all four of those victims were current or former Portage students.
Strazdas noted that those articles helped generate a standing-room-only meeting at Portage City Hall in September 2008, and many of those in attendance joined the Kalamazoo County Substance Abuse Task Force.
The task force, which recently received a $625,000 federal grant to fund its efforts for the next five years, is focused on substance-abuse prevention, enforcement and treatment.
Among its accomplishments this past year, the task force:
- Distributed booklets to alcohol retailers showing examples of driver’s licenses from all 50 states, an effort to reduce the ability of teens to use fake identifications.
- Distributed 40,000 inserts to local pharmacies for inclusion in prescriptions of narcotics. The inserts told of the need to lock up such drugs to keep them away from teens.
- Collected 100 pounds of controlled substances and 3,500 pounds of noncontrolled substances from leftover medications that families turned over to the Kalamazoo Department of Health and Community Services for incineration.
- Created a new text-messaging system that allows Kalamazoo County Silent Observer to receive texts that tip police about criminal activity. In use since May, texts received so far have led to a raid on a Portage methamphetamine lab and helped officials derail a party planned by a teenager while his parents were away.
“We still need to be vigilant,” Portage Public Schools Superintendent Marsha Wells said. “Our work is not over. It’s just beginning.”
Date: October 28, 2009
Source: Kalamazoo Gazette
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