Drug Abuse

LYNNE ABRAHAM doesn't get it. She didn't get it when she was Philadelphia's district attorney from 1991 until last year. And she'll probably never get it, no matter how many statistics and reports show that America's 40-year-old "war on drugs" has been a hugely expensive and crime-inducing failure. "My view remains unchanged with regard to drug abuse," Abraham, 70, said from her office at the Archer & Greiner law firm, where the bulldoggish ex-prosecutor is now a partner. Her view is that people who smoke marijuana - by far the most widely used illicit drug in the United States - are violent deviants, roaming Philly's streets with deadly weapons, killing witnesses and committing "untold numbers of crimes" to support their habit.

Glassboro residents may learn a bit about drug abuse when they pay their water and tax bills. Through a plan instituted by Joseph Manganaro, superintendent of the Water and Sewer Department, borough employees are distributing drug education guides when residents come in to pay their bills. The guides contain information about eight drugs, including alcohol, cocaine and marijuana, and list physical symptoms of users, what to look for and the dangers associated with the drug's use on a 3-by-5-inch slide-rule- like card.

Gilberto carefully unwrapped a packet containing a grayish powder and slowly sprinkled the drug into some tobacco he had arranged in a piece of cigarette paper. With practiced fingers, Gilberto rolled the cigarette and licked it shut. He lighted the cigarette, inhaled deeply. As the drug took effect, a faint smile came across his face. "It feels good," said Gilberto, 32, his voice becoming thick and smooth. "I feel a little more energetic than before. " It was 3 in the afternoon Thursday, and Gilberto had just awoken on the frayed, filthy mattress in the bedroom of his near-barren brick house in a northern Medellin neighborhood.

A group of Philadelphia-area lawmakers called yesterday for a wide range of programs to combat drug abuse, but they presented no specific legislative proposals. Sen. Hardy Williams (D., Phila.), backed by 10 other city legislators, cited the slayings last month of Anthony Williams, 13, and his brother Cornell, 15, as examples of the worsening drug problem. The two youths, who lived near the King Plaza public-housing project in the 1200 block of Catharine Street, were abducted March 12 and later shot, allegedly by cocaine dealers for whom they sold drugs.

Diego Maradona is in a rigorous rehab program for drug abuse and is considering further treatment outside Argentina, his doctor said yesterday. The 43-year-old soccer great, who led Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title, has been at a psychiatric hospital in suburban Buenos Aires since early May when he was rushed to a clinic for lung and heart problems. Dr. Alfredo Cahe, Maradona's personal physician, said the former player appeared to be taking drug rehab seriously "for the first time in his life.

There have been significant recent developments in the areas of detecting and treating drug abuse in the workplace. Unfortunately, broadbrush drug screening bypasses these developments. It offers the allure of technology and action, and the illusion of security. In fact it is a throwback to moralistic models of substance abuse that have traditionally fueled rather than quelled abuse problems. This is particularly unfortunate today because of the strides that have been made in addiction treatment in the last decade.

The attorneys of the Montgomery County Bar Association and the doctors of the Montgomery County Medical Society are joining the fight against illegal drugs in the schools with a new program to speak to students on the consequences of drug abuse. The first participants in the program will be Cheltenham Elementary School students, who will meet today with Cheltenham physician Donna Farrell and attorney Leonard L. Shober of McTighe, Weiss, Bacine & O'Rourke of Norristown. Students in Cheltenham's Myers Elementary School will participate in a December program.

These days, many schools have a zero-tolerance policy for students caught doing drugs or drinking alcohol on campus. But Westtown School has a different approach. For the last eight years, the private Quaker day and boarding school, founded in 1799, has had a two-track system of discipline and treatment that educators and students at the school agree is working. "Since we left that [zero-tolerance policy] and went to the dual track, we have seen a lessening of drug abuse," said head of school Tom Farquhar.

Cincinnati Bengals backup fullback Stanley Wilson, who has a history of drug problems, was suspended before yesterday's Super Bowl for violating the NFL's substance-abuse policy. Details were sketchy, but sources with the Bengals gave this account of the incident that led to the league's suspension: Wilson, 27, had appeared in good spirits earlier Saturday, posing for pictures with some young Bengals fans after a morning team meeting. He missed a 7 p.m. team meeting, however, and was then found in his hotel room incoherent and apparently under the influence of a controlled substance.

The Congressional leadership and the Reagan Administration discovered this summer what the Harlem Representative Charles B. Rangel and every urban cop and street-smart teen-ager from Brooklyn to East Los Angeles have known for more than a decade: addiction is America's No. 1 crime problem. The arrival of crack and its electric spread beyond the black ghettos have frightened middle-class parents. The President and the Congress are responding like vigilantes in the Wild West. But what they have done so far is likely to be as effective in dealing with addiction as the gun-toting vigilantes were in pacifying our frontier.

THE AKRON ZIPS will be without the services of starting point guard Alex Abreu after the All-Mid-American Conference junior found himself in jail on Thursday facing multiple felony charges, according to published reports. The Akron Beacon-Journal reported that Abreu was arrested after accepting a "large" shipment of marijuana from undercover officers who detected the package using drug dogs. Akron Municipal Court records showed Abreu was charged with two third-degree felonies of drug trafficking and drug abuse.

The deadly confrontation in Berlin Borough where one man shot another with a bow and arrow was the culmination of a peculiar feud, a Superior Court judge in Camden heard Wednesday. It was a tangled tale: A spurned lover trying to reclaim the affections of a woman; a threat by that man to infect someone with HIV; allegations of stalking; a history of drug abuse - and the fatal intervention of another man. The drama came to a head Monday night outside a tidy split-level in the shadow of a concrete plant.

Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in New Jersey. It surpassed traffic fatalities in 2009, when 752 people died, according to a drug policy advocacy group. Of those deaths, 75 percent involved heroin or prescription opiates, a growing addiction problem in New Jersey and the nation. Legislators tried to address the issue last year when they approved the Good Samaritan Emergency Response Act, a bill that offered limited criminal amnesty to drug users who call for help when someone has overdosed.

By Nancy Robinson Vice President Biden and President Obama have a real opportunity to reduce gun violence, and it doesn't require banning assault weapons. Although the debate following the Newtown shootings immediately turned to assault rifles, those weapons have little to do with the vast majority of gun deaths in America. Every year, the city of Bridgeport, Conn., less than 30 miles from Newtown, buries as many people due to violence as were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School that day. In 2010, 1,773 young people were victims of homicide in the United States; 67 of them were elementary-school age. Year after year, gun violence - not diabetes, auto accidents, or drug abuse - is the No. 1 cause of death for young African American men and boys.

The New Jersey chapter of the country's largest drug-abuse prevention program for schoolchildren is in jeopardy of losing its charter in a dispute over a national curriculum it says is unproved. The state chapter of Drug Abuse Resistance Education, popularly known as D.A.R.E., introduced an alternate curriculum in New Jersey elementary schools in July, allegedly without seeking approval of its parent organization, D.A.R.E. America. The move came after the New Jersey Association of School Administrators notified New Jersey D.A.R.E.

What a top prosecutor calls "the fastest-growing drug problem" in America isn't about dope dealers on a street corner. It starts inside doctors' offices, clinics, hospital emergency rooms, and at pharmacy counters - where painkillers are acquired by prescription. The rampant abuse of addictive drugs such as oxycodone and hydrocodone contributes to an overdose epidemic now viewed by federal health officials as the leading U.S. cause of accidental death, and Pennsylvania is high on the list of problem states.

Peter Mandel is an author of books for children, including the new "Jackhammer Sam" (Macmillan/Roaring Brook) The Internet is a nearly infinite universe of things I do not want to know. I can usually ignore the boasts, the shards of opinion, and the superfluous stuff. But one fact sticks in my craw: There are people who brazenly use my name. I'm not alone in this. The journalist David F. Carr shares most of his name with the well-known New York Times columnist David M. Carr. It didn't seem so bad, F. Carr recently said, except that M. Carr chronicled his years of drug abuse in his memoir.

Older teens and adults with attention deficit disorder are much less likely to commit a crime while on ADHD medication, a provocative study from Sweden found. It also showed in dramatic fashion how much more prone people with ADHD are to break the law - four to seven times more likely than others. The findings suggest that Ritalin, Adderall, and other drugs that curb hyperactivity and boost attention remain important beyond the school-age years and that wider use of these medications in older patients might help curb crime.

An accidental overdose of heroin caused the Aug. 5 death of Garrett Reid, son of Eagles head coach Andy Reid, Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek announced at an afternoon news conference. The cause of death will be listed as "acute opiate (heroin) toxicity" and classified as "accidental," Lysek said. The finding confirms what many, including the coach himself, suspected, because of Garrett Reid's history of drug abuse. The body of Garrett Reid, 29, was found in a Lehigh University dormitory room during Eagles training camp.

Patty DiRenzo describes how she felt Friday when she heard that Gov. Christie had vetoed New Jersey's "911 Good Samaritan" legislation. "It was like I'd been punched in the stomach," the Blackwood legal secretary says. The measure, for which DiRenzo, 53, had lobbied for two years, would spare those who summon emergency aid for drug-overdose victims from potentially facing drug charges themselves. The proposal needs more scrutiny, according to Christie, a former federal prosecutor who has shown similar caution about establishing the state's medical-marijuana program.