Drug Abuse

To curtail drug abuse, especially by young people, public officials and community groups in Bucks County and the Philadelphia area are targeting unused and out-of-date prescriptions. "If you have drugs of abuse - OxyContin, another one of the potent painkillers - and you have teenagers in your home," Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler said Wednesday, "you have a potentially lethal combination. " To encourage the safe disposal of prescription drugs, Bucks - which already provides 15 permanent collection boxes - will participate in the third National Prescription Drug Take-Back from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 29, with 45 drop-off spots around the county and more than 380 in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

DETROIT - Betty Ford, 93, the former first lady whose triumph over drug and alcohol addiction became a beacon of hope for addicts and the inspiration for her Betty Ford Center, has died, a family friend said Friday. During and after her years in the White House, 1974 to 1977, Mrs. Ford won acclaim for her candor, wit and courage as she fought breast cancer, severe arthritis, and the twin addictions of drugs and alcohol. She also pressed for abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment.

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.

TRENTON - Crooked doctors, rogue Internet sites, and deceitful smartphone applications are stymieing attempts to fight a deadly drug-abuse epidemic in New Jersey, according to a state investigation released Wednesday. A probe launched last year by the State Commission of Investigation revealed that law enforcement had been outpaced by alarmingly advanced technology used by drug dealers. It also found that the national surge in teenagers who experiment with pain drugs from family medicine cabinets was leading to an even more perilous behavior in New Jersey: heroin addiction.

  Since publishing "Assault on Learning," a seven-part series documenting violence in the Philadelphia School District, The Inquirer has received hundreds of responses via e-mail, telephone, and Facebook, and on Philly.com. Following are excerpts from readers' comments, organized by theme. Click here to read the series.   Confronting violence Everyone talks about how bad the public schools are, but nothing ever seems to get done about it. There are many families who can't afford to take their children out of these violent schools and put them elsewhere.

David F. Musto, 74, an expert on drug-control policy who wrote an important history of drug use in the United States and government efforts to control it and served as a government adviser on drug policy during the Carter administration, died Friday in Shanghai, apparently of a heart attack. Dr. Musto, who lived in New Haven, Conn., was in China to attend a ceremony marking the donation of his books and papers to Shanghai University and the creation there of the Center for International Drug Control Policy Studies.

One day after Monique Riley allegedly torched her ex-beau's rowhouse and ignited a blaze that damaged eight others, Riley's relatives sprang to her defense, saying desperation - and maybe drugs - drove her to pyromania. "It seems like she's the demon, but there's two sides to every story," her sister Dyanne Riley said yesterday morning. Monique Riley, 32, was charged with aggravated assault, arson and related offenses after she allegedly doused Ouris Alston Jr.'s East Germantown home with gasoline and set it ablaze Thursday.

At a time when other state agencies' budgets are being cut, it's hard to make the case for creation of a new office. But the new Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, signed into law by Gov. Rendell on Friday, will provide long-needed services that will ultimately save the state money. The new office will begin operations on July 1, 2011. The new cabinet secretary, to be named by the next governor, and his or her staff will cost an estimated $1.4 million per year for administration.

A. Thomas McLellan, a former University of Pennsylvania psychologist whose appointment last year as the top federal official on addiction treatment was seen as signaling a major shift in drug policy, is planning to step down in July. Friends and colleagues said Friday that McLellan, who is known as a straight-talking, get-it-done kind of scientist, likes everything about the job except bureaucracy and politics. Unfortunately, his title is deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Violence in New Jersey public schools declined 5 percent during the 2007-2008 school year, but substance abuse rose, according to an annual report released yesterday. State Education Commissioner Lucille E. Davy credited the decrease in violent incidents to the state's continuing antiviolence efforts. She blamed the 4 percent increase in substance abuse, in part, on the growing problem of children with access to prescription drugs. Davy said the department planned to address the issue.