Schools

Twin Peaks Middle School Hosts Prescription Drug Abuse Awareness Forum

Prescription drug abuse is a problem among Poway youth, according to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department.

Students, parents and community members gathered to learn about the dangers of prescription drug abuse, particularly the painkiller OxyContin, during a presentation at Twin Peaks Middle School Wednesday evening.

The forum, which was sponsored by Twin Peaks’ Parent Teacher Student Association, was led by Sgt. David Ross and Deputy District Attorney Matthew Williams.

Ross, who is on the Narcotics Task Force for the San Diego Sheriff's Department and helped establish the OXY Task Force in San Diego, said prescription drug abuse is prevalent in Poway and other upper middle class neighborhoods.

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“Poway’s been hit hard,” said Ross, who has worked for the department for 22 years.

In fact, Ross said one of the largest drug dealers he ever arrested lived across the street from Twin Peaks Middle School. When police first began investigating him, he was dealing OxyContin, and when they finished, he was also dealing heroine, Ross said.

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Prescription drugs have become the second most abused illegal drug after marijuana in juveniles ages 12-17 and the most commonly abused drug among 12-13 year olds, according to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. 

Williams explained prescription drugs are being substituted for “street drugs” because they are often easily obtainable from the family medicine cabinet and youth believe they are safer, because doctors prescribe them. Students studying for exams commonly abuse drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, and they commonly abuse drugs like OxyContin and Xanax to cope with academic, social or emotional stress, Williams said.

Ross showed the roughly 120 attendees mug shots of young drug addicts and dealers, as well as graphic images of youth who have died from drug overdose.

“This happens everyday,” he said. “Kids don’t get it. They don’t put two and two together. They don’t think about if you're putting something else in your body other than food and water, this could happen to you.”

In San Diego, there were 357 deaths related to prescription drugs in 2005, Ross said. The number of deaths related to prescription drugs increased to 621 in 2009. Those figures don’t include car accident deaths, he added.

Ross shared a 911 call of a mother who discovered her son dead from an accidental drug overdose. During the audio, one teenager in attendance left the room crying. He also showed interviews of two young informants who commented on their experiences with OxyContin. “Jay,” the son of a police officer, later died from overdose after a long struggle with his addiction. “Sam,” who admitted OxyContin is the “drug of choice” in Poway, said she didn’t know the drug was “synthetic heroin.”

“I didn’t know you had withdrawals,” she said. “I didn’t know you could get sick. I didn’t know you could overdose.” Now a full-time student, Sam is clean.

“We want to leave you with a real experience of what’s going out on the street,” Ross said. “This isn’t make believe out there, folks. These are things that we deal with everyday.”

To show just how real the problem is in Poway, local teens whose lives have been affected by prescription drugs addressed the crowd.

Holding up one finger for “yes” and two fingers for “no,” a former Twin Peaks Middle School student warned today’s students about the dangers of prescription drug abuse. Aaron Rubin, who graduated from Poway High School in 2000, was in a coma for more than three weeks after an accidental overdose of OxyContin and other prescription medications in October 2005. He had suffered a heart attack and two strokes and is now a quadriplegic and unable to speak. He communicates by answering questions with his fingers. Now, he and his family travel to various schools and organizations to help educate others.

“If you choose to take drugs and pills, it will end in a tragic ending,” Sherrie Rubin, Aaron’s mother, said.  “You’ll either have a tragic life of being an addict the rest of your life, it will be a tragedy that you die or you can have a tragic ending and have a life with many challenges like Aaron has now. No matter what, it will be a tragic ending and a tragic life for you.

"Life is hard enough. Don’t give yourself anymore problems than you need."

Mike Rubin, Aaron’s father, asked young audience members to raise their hands if they know students who do drugs. Several students raised their hands.

“Until you're honest that there’s something going on, your community can’t get help,” Sherrie Rubin said.

“I just want to say that I really appreciate you guys being here,” she added. “I think it’s a really important message and I think you’re very, very fortunate to be given this message.”

Sam, the young woman in the video, was also in attendance and answered questions from audience members.

One young child asked her if she “felt bad” for trying drugs.

“I regret it, yes,” she said.

Ross said he has interviewed about 100 youth and almost all of them admit they began taking drugs after the “popular kids” offered them at a friend’s house or party.

“We’re dealing with kids that are in middle school, high school—kids that don’t feel comfortable in their own skin,” he said. “They’re still trying to find themselves and all they want to do is fit in.”

There are a variety of ways youth obtain prescription drugs, Ross explained, with the most common being the family medicine cabinet. They also obtain them from Internet/illegal sales, employee theft, pharmacy thefts, “doctor shopping,” fraudulent prescriptions and street level dealers. Ross said border smuggling is also common among youth, because they can easily trade electronics or other valuables for prescription drugs and heroin in Mexico.

Ross, a father of a 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, addressed the audience as an officer, but also as a parent.

He advised parents to be observant of physical warning signs, which include extreme loss of appetite and weight, watery/sunken eyes, poor complexion or sickly appearance, constipation, drowsiness, frequently sick, tremors, twitching, excessive scratching and appears intoxicated without signs of alcohol use.

Ross also encouraged parents to ask their children questions if they notice they have become withdrawn from family, lose interest in things they once found important, have a decline in academic or work performance, have money issues, have household items missing or have stories that don’t make sense. Parents should regularly check their children’s bedrooms, bathrooms, cars and backpacks to look for drug paraphernalia, he added. 

“Nothing I preach here to you tonight is something that I don’t do at home. If I’m going to stand up here and tell you what I think you should do, I do it myself,” Ross said. “Don’t ask the difficult questions and wait for the simple answers. If you’re going to ask the tough questions, then you better wait for the tough answers. Why do we accept ‘nothing’ all the time?”

Unused prescription pills can be dropped off at Poway Sheriff's Station as part of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department Prescription Drop Box program. For more information about the drop boxes or the OXY Task Force, visit sdsheriff.net.


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