Study: War on alcohol, drugs failing in county

Newark Advocate
Aug. 21, 2005

Originally, a party sounded fun.
But then somebody burned the carpet, splintered the banister and broke the vacuum trying to sweep up the stuffing from the torn couch. When the sun came up, Sarah had cleaning to do.

She and 15 friends washed their glasses and gathered the trash, but forgot a liquor-filled water bottle in the sink and left a row of bulging garbage bags in the garage.

Sarah’s parents grounded their daughter for a month, but the parties didn’t stop then.

Juvenile drug and alcohol use is a problem for every young generation, but it is especially troubling to experts today when kids understand the risks and take them anyway. A recent study suggests massive efforts to curtail risk-taking among kids are not working in Licking County, especially in Newark.

“There are more drugs in this country today than when the War on Drugs started,” Granville Police Chief Steve Cartnal said. “That tells you right there: We are failing.”Last year, 41 percent of U.S.
eighth-graders said marijuana was easy to get, and 65 percent thought finding alcohol a snap. Both eighth-graders and sophomores thought alcohol was easier to get than cigarettes.

Nearly 71 percent of high school kids drink by graduation; 58 percent have drunk by sophomore year — including Sarah.

“It’s really easy to start drinking, especially if you have older friends, because they have their connections, too,” she said. “It’s really not difficult to get what you want.”

When Sarah’s parents caught her and a friend with marijuana on spring break, the punishment was again severe. Soon her interest in drugs waned.

“My parents made it harder and harder to get away with it,” she said. “I appreciate it now. It was what I needed.”

Sarah’s mother later learned of her daughter’s ability to reach her thin hand into a loosely locked liquor cabinet and grab vodka, which she pooled with the stolen alcohol of friends’ parents to fuel parties.
“Kids are sneaky,” Sarah’s mother said. “If they want it, they can get it.”

One parent who regrets not being more vigilant is Sarah Ann. Her son started hanging out with older friends in high school and spent more time alone in his room. He was arrested for drinking, but her punishment wasn’t harsh enough and his usage escalated. She caught him drinking a case of beer with his friends four times.

“There was no remorse. Nobody tried to hide anything. It’s just as if they were sitting there drinking root beer,” she said. “The only emotion was anger when I took it away.”

After her son was caught with marijuana, Sarah Ann cracked down, but it was too late. Her son was distant, uncaring.

“My biggest regret is not knowing who his friends were,” she said. “Just because they’re teenagers doesn’t mean you can be less vigilant than when they were toddlers.”

Parenting by example?

Kelly tried cigarettes in sixth grade and alcohol in seventh.
“Everyone drinks when they’re young,” he said, “It’s an easy thing to get a hold of.”

He got the beer from a friend’s parents, whose refrigerator was too fully stocked for them to notice a few drinks missing.

The “Dad’s-full-fridge” concept is familiar to Cartnal.

“Availability doesn’t necessarily mean availability for purchase, it just means it’s there for them to get their hands on,” he said.

Officer Parry Broseus runs the DARE program in Heath. He asks the children what adults do on holidays. “Drink,” the kids say. When they watch a ballgame? “Drink,” they say.

The pattern was clear to Sarah.

“You see your own parents getting drunk and you think, ‘They’re doing this right in front of me. It’d be hypocritical of them to tell me (not to),’” she said.

Matt’s parents were watchful, but he didn’t need parties, just a fake identification to buy an occasional six-pack at the local drive-through.
“After once or twice, they’d never ID us again,” he said. “They’d never ID any of the girls that were with us. It seems in Licking County a lot of places are just trying to make a sale.”

Marijuana

Marijuana is equally available, but distinctly different. Though illegal in every state, one in three 12th-graders and one in 10 eighth-graders in the U.S. smoke annually. More than 13.1 million youths 12 to 25 get high each year.

“There are so many people out there who grow this that it’s a very accessible drug,” said Granville Patrolman John Davis, who hopes to join the Drug Enforcement Administration. “You can basically get it from anybody.”

Kelly first tried marijuana in eighth grade.

“It’s like girls, roller coasters,” he said. “It’s just another way to stimulate your body.”

He smoked until his sophomore year. It opened his mind, he said, but eventually it had shown him all it was going to show him.
Lt. Bruce Myers, head of the Central Ohio Drug Enforcement Task Force, leads efforts to stop drug trafficking by arresting users and “rolling” them over to pinch their suppliers. The task force confiscated $86,335 worth of marijuana in 2004 — 30 percent more than crack, cocaine and methamphetamine combined.

Myers said heavy air traffic makes hydroponics, an indoor growing system, the most common growing method in Licking County.
In hydroponics the plants grow in trays and are fed by nutrient-rich water, which is cleansed and replaced periodically. Lit by powerful fluorescent bulbs, the system makes for astronomical electric bills — a cop’s first clue.

Active growers can produce enough in three months to bring felony charges, but Myers said it’s possible to pull in more than $10,000 a month. Some make their living on marijuana.

It is telling that an ounce of gold bullion and a high quality ounce of pot both sell for around $440. The DEA ranks pot as the fourth-largest cash crop in the U.S. behind corn, soybeans and hay.

“So much of our crime is driven by the drug trade,” said Myers, who has arrested 11-year-olds on marijuana charges. “Kids will steal to come up with money for drugs.”

Former Newark High School counselor Tom Murray has heard hundreds of drug stories.

“If a kid wants a joint tonight, he can get one,” he said. “If a girl wants a bottle of booze tonight, she can get one. The underground is alive and well, and I don’t think they’ll ever flood it out.”

Granville High School principal Chuck Dilbone called a meeting last fall after several students attended school functions drunk.

“It seemed like we just had several incidents hit bang, bang, bang,” he said. “I always knew the drinking was going on, but they were becoming pretty brash with it.”

Those who attended the meeting decided that parents were responsible, not schools. Carol Field, a Lakewood teacher and mother of three, agreed.

“It depends on the values they bring from home,” she said. “The school can’t be the mother and father to everyone.”