Verona and Nutley recently hosted a program to inform the community about the growing prescription drug and heroin problem. The program, “Our Kids Are Dying: Uniting Our Communities to Address the Prescription Drug and Heroin Epidemic,” was hosted by Verona and Nutley Student Assistance Coordinators, Dana Lustig and Lisa Casilli.

The goals of the program were to better understand how drugs infiltrate the lives of children, develop prevention tactics, and build a better holistic understanding of addiction. Recovering addicts, parents and family of recovering addicts, law enforcement, and experts in drug recognition were all present and participated by giving presentations and speaking on a panel for a question-and-answer with the audience.

Officer Joe Abrusci, of the New Jersey Drug Recognition Assembly, is an expert on evaluating drug-impaired individuals. He led a presentation on recognizing drug abuse in children.

He told the assembly of local parents, some with their children, that most children get introduced to drugs when they are around twelve years old and in middle school.

In 2011, one out of six high school seniors had driven high within the last two weeks of the time the survey was taken, he said. One out of four had been a passenger.

Twelve to seventeen year olds use prescription drugs illegally more often than ecstasy, heroin, crack cocaine and meth combined, according to Officer Abrusci.

Adolescents are partaking in a new trend called “pharming parties,” in which young adults and teens get together to use prescription drugs, Officer Abrusci told the group of community members.

A recovering addict, sober seven years, spoke, stating that addiction is “a way of slowly committing suicide.” A Nutley resident, he was popular in high school and played sports. But no one could see his life deteriorating. His drug abuse started in middle school.

“There came a time in my life where I didn’t have a choice,” he told the group. “I had to use… There’s no such thing as just using on the weekends.”

“I’m part of a community and people see names in the paper and they want to talk but no one wants to look in their own backyards.”

A panel of officers, recovering addicts, and parents of recovering addicts took questions from the community.

“The county’s approach to the thing is ‘it’s help first,’” said Officer Mike Padilla of Nutley. “If you’re not staying ahead of the curve [as a parent] then there’s a problem.”

“The truth is bad things happen in good families,” he told the group.

According to Officer Tim Banta of Verona, there have been four overdose-based deaths in town in the past 13 months. “Our primary goal is to help you,” said Officer Banta. “This can end in two ways: arrest or death. We want to stop it before it gets to that point.”

“Your officers are not here to get your kids in trouble,” Ms. Lustig said. “They are a phone call away and want to help.”

“It isn’t just people that are dying,”  Ms. Lustig stated empathetically. “It’s our kids that are dying.”