Parents need to be vigilant in talking with their children about the dangers of heroin use and pushing their local school boards to institute education programs to address the growing drug epidemic, according to local law enforcement experts.
“The most important thing is for parents to address the issue,” said Sgt. Dan Albrecht of the Western Springs Police Department’s Investigation Unit.
He and other panelists at a Sept. 14 town hall meeting at the Lyons Township High School South Campus said that parents cannot rely on school districts to tackle heroin education. In fact, the chief executive officer of the Robert Crown Center for Health Education noted that neither of its two interactive software programs (one for seventh- and eight-graders, the other for high school freshmen and sophomores) is in any school districts east of County Line Road.
Panelists at the meeting, sponsored by state Rep. Patti Bellock, a Hinsdale Republican, said that parents need to urge their local school boards to add educational programs about the dangers of the drug.
Brian Sexton, an assistant Cook County state’s attorney, said that residents continue to downplay and decriminalize marijuana use, but that pot is a gateway drug to heroin.
“People think marijuana is no big deal. It doesn’t mean your kid is going to be a heroin addict. I’m not saying that,” Sexton said. “But every heroin addict started off with that.”
He said the potency of pot has also increased, adding to the likelihood of transitioning to heroin.
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“It’s not your father’s marijuana either. It’s extremely potent,” he said. “Then it goes to prescription drugs – hydrocodone, oxycontin, xanax. They start taking it from you. You may have some left over. Get rid of them.”
He said Interstate 290 is known as the Heroin Highway because of there being an open air drug market along Independence Boulevard just south of the expressway. Sexton said as soon as law enforcement shuts down one operation along Independence, another pops up on an opposite corner. When Chicago put blue light cameras in the area, operations simply moved a block or two over to be out of view, he said.
“You can get all the heroin you want,” Sexton said, “and every kid in the suburbs knows it.”
Mark Piccoli, director of the DuPage Metropolitan Enforcement Group of which Western Springs is a member, said that there has yet to be a peak in heroin use.
Piccoli, who has spent 38 years in law enforcement, starting his career with the Darien Police Department, said years ago when you looked up heroin user in the encyclopedia there would be a picture of a straggly-looking, strung out individual.
“We all know that is not the case anymore,” Piccoli said. “It’s 14-year-olds, it’s 20-year-olds, it’s 35- and 50-year-olds.”
Piccoli said that in 2009 his drug enforcement group seized 120 grams of heroin. By 2015, that had increased more than 15-fold to 1,845 grams confiscated.
He added that DuMEG seized more heroin than marijuana and made more heroin arrests than marijuana arrests last year. That is partly because of DuMEG putting more emphasis on halting heroin sales, but also because of the drug’s increased presence in the area.
“We’re seeing a lot of it, Piccoli said. “Unfortunately, (with) all the education we all doing, all the programs, we are not seeing an ebb to this problem yet which I don’t get, I don’t understand. But for whatever the reason — the high, the thrill — the demand is not getting any less.”
He said parents need to ensure that their prescription drugs, especially painkillers and other opiods, which are a gateway to heroin use, are secure. Piccoli said that prescription pills are the number one substance abuse with teens today.
The DuMEG director said that undercover officers have already doubled the amount of pills confiscated in undercover drug purchases this year from last year, going from less than 500 to 1,000.
“Do your best to educate your children, your other family members, about the dangers of drug use,” Piccoli said. “We are not seeing an ebb or an end to it yet.”
Western Springs’ Albrecht noted that there have been 111 saves by police from overdoses in DuPage County so far this year through the use of Narcan, a nasal spray that is an opiate antidote.
“We are not looking to go and arrest somebody whose using heroin. That’s not really the goal of this,” Albrecht said. “The goal is to save a life, to prevent someone from dying.”
Kevin Beese is a freelance writer for Pioneer Press.