Combating Heroin: School Officials Team Up With Cops, Mental Health Professionals

Plans are underway for a symposium that officials hope will counteract rising heroin use in the area—"

The goal of the project would be to show people early signs of addiction, along with , officials said Wednesday. School district representatives, law enforcement officials and mental health professionals attended the second Community Link morning to plan.

Speakers with firsthand addiction experience, playing actual 911 calls from overdose cases, showing samples of real heroin and other drugs so people know what to look for and providing copious literature on available resources were all suggested.

One suggested speaker is David Lee, founder of Indiana-based Intervention Services. Participants in Orland Fire Battalion Chief Mike Schofield’s were also mentioned as possible speakers. Enlisting Carl Sandburg High School students in broadcast classes to film the event for those who can’t attend was also brought up.

The event is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, May 1 at , though that is not confirmed yet and more planning remains.

Attendees at the Wednesday morning meeting offered the following perspectives and input on drug use.

• Lynne Donegan, Board of Education Member:  “When we think of someone with heroin addiction, we think of a person with no teeth living in the inner city in an abandoned house. Not too long ago, a classical musician in high school, his mother found him slumped over the piano. He died of a heroin overdose. It’s real and it’s here.”

• Mary Egan, Community Relations Coordinator for Rosecrance Health Network: “People end up always chasing the high. They might build a strong dependency, and then stop for a while. Then their tolerance isn’t as high, they take too much and that’s often when they die. Some say they didn’t realize it was heroin when they first did it.”

• Alison Boutcher, Counselor/Prevention Coordinator with : “We’re learning that it is very difficult for people to ask for help. We want to figure out how to take the shame and guilt out of asking for help.”

• Ann Gentile, Orland School District 135 Board of Education Vice President (Gentile is related to Stagg graduate Brooke Fry who died at a party on New Year’s Eve): “When you think of the look of heroin, that wasn’t the look of heroin. It can be anywhere, at any time at any age. I don’t think people really know who to identify what that looks like. I didn’t until New Year’s Eve.”

• Russell Johnson, Social Worker at Carl Sandburg High School (referring to a rise in prescription drug use and the apparent ease of access): “One of the things we tend to overlook with access is the medicine cabinet at home. Kids do seem to be doing a lot more of the prescriptions. They like the Xanax, the Oxycontin. Some of it is they are getting…either they get from someone who’s prescribed it or someone in the family has it. You don’t typically think of locking your medicine cabinet from your kids. The access can also be right there in your own home.”

• Sgt. Scott Malmborg, : “We can limit access (to prescription drugs), but like the heroin it’s a choice. Some people, if they want it, they’ll get it.”  

• Brian Lengfelder, Addiction Services Program Manager with : “Groups of people will go to these suburbs where money is available and introduce to the population at certain parties, and next thing we know the cycle starts. They get addicted, but what they don’t realize is in five to seven days it’s gone. They just can’t get past day three.”

• Cheryl Kokaska, Counselor/Outreach Coordinator, Orland Township Youth and Family Services: “This is really a Cook County-wide, state-wide, nationwide problem. I have two teenage daughters and it could be one of mine, or their friends.”

Representatives from the , Cook County Board of Commissioners and also attended the meeting.

Looking for related news?

Like us on Facebook