Community Corner
DHS Hosts Heroin Panel Discussion Tuesday Night
The Not My Kid! program is geared toward North Shore parents to educate them on the reality of the area's drug and alcohol culture.
The following notice is from the Deerfield Parent Network Facebook page:
Recent headlines, both national and local, have underscored the harsh reality that heroin and opiate abuse is on the rise in Lake County and around the country.
A number of factors have converged to cause this alarming surge: wide availability, a cost that's less than alcohol or pot, skyrocketing increases in prescriptions for highly-addictive painkillers, and the elimination of needles in favor of smoking or snorting this increasingly potent and potentially deadly drug. In Lake County alone, heroin-related deaths have increased by 115% from 2007 to 2011, according to an Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy study; and in 2012, reached the highest number in five years.
On Tuesday, March 4, Deerfield Parent Network (DPN) and Parents. The Anti-Drug (PTAD) bring a panel presentation to the community to address this problem head on.
The program, "Not My Kid!" will be held at Deerfield High School’s North Café at 7 p.m.; the program is free and open to the entire community, but is especially geared to parents. Educating parents on the reality of what their teens are exposed to on the North Shore when it comes to drugs and alcohol, and how to keep them safe, will be discussed by a panel of experts, including Lake County State's Attorney Mike Nerheim; Laura Parise, M.D. and Maura Mooney, LSW, CADC, substance abuse treatment professionals at NorthShore University HealthSystem; DHS Principal Audris Griffith and HPHS Principal Brad Swanson; DHS Resource Officer Anthony Kropp, and a former DHS student, now a recovering addict.
The fact that this problem has hit so hard so close to home is a call to action for the entire community.
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