Drug Abuse

If she were commanding a Broadway stage, Nadria Jennings' ballad, "Hold Me," would be the showstopper. In a sweet soprano, Jennings, 17, sings about children who have lost parents to drugs, AIDS and violence. "All they want," she vocalizes, "is love and a normal life." During a noisy rehearsal in a West Baltimore church, Jennings captures the toll of so many deadly plagues on Baltimore's children, including herself. Her father died when she was 7. When she joined the Nu World Art Ensemble, a performing arts company, three years ago, Jennings found a family, an outlet for her talent, and a way to turn tragedy into art. The work is "healing for me," says the Dr. Samuel L. Banks High School graduate.

In Baltimore CountyCounty police union elects officers and board of directorsCARNEY -- Baltimore County Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 4, has elected new officers. The officers, whose terms begin Dec. 20, are:President, Sgt. Cole Weston; first vice president, Lt. Jerry Foracappo; second vice president, Cpl. Steve Comegna; lodge secretary, Sgt. Dave Folderauer; treasurer, retired Detective George Hubbard; state trustee, retired Lt. Lou Lagna; sergeant-at-arms, Sgt. Mel Teal; chaplain, retired Sgt. Paul Merkle.

Howard County Executive James N. Robey and the county's largest foundation announced an initiative yesterday to streamline efforts to combat substance abuse -- the first effort of its kind in the county and possibly the first in the country, experts said.Until now, nonprofit groups and government organizations have tackled the county's drug problems separately. The one-year DELTA (Drug abuse: Evaluation of Legal and Treatment Alternatives) Project, a $320,000 joint effort of the Horizon Foundation and Howard government, will pull together prevention, treatment and criminal justice workers to develop a blueprint to tackle drug abuse on several fronts.

THE POPULARITY of hair testing to detect drug use is skyrocketing nationwide. But with the increased popularity comes controversy over the accuracy of the method. People in different parts of the country claim they have received false results through hair testing.Employers, including some of the nation's biggest corporations, favor hair testing over urinalysis because it can reveal drug use from months earlier, rather than from only the previous few days. General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, BMW and Rubbermaid are among the more than 1,000 companies employing the test.

WASHINGTON -- Every now and then the best of societies goes a little crazy and embraces monstrous social policies that become almost impossible to reverse. The United States has done that regarding crime, especially drug abuse.Our states are spending almost $30 billion annually on prisons, which house three times the number of inmates imprisoned 20 years ago. We are incarcerating our people at a rate never known in any civilized society.While bond issues to build schools are often failing, this country is willingly building a 1,000-bed jailhouse or prison every week.

Service clubs are alive and fighting drug abuseThe Sun's March 31 article "End of the `glory days of service clubs,' " lamented the decline of service organizations. But I'd like to suggest that they are alive and well and working for drug abuse prevention.The Office of National Drug Control Policy is part of a historic substance abuse prevention alliance of 47 civic, service, fraternal and women's organizations that represent more than 100 million members. In 1997 leaders of these groups signed an agreement calling for more than 1 million hours of volunteer service in mentoring, drug education and local activities that educate and enable America's youth to reject illegal drugs as well as alcohol and tobacco.

A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL IS killed by a stray bullet during a dispute over drugs on a Baltimore street. A mugger, presumed to be a drug addict, robs and kills a minister for $15. The venereal disease rate soars, as prostitutes sell themselves for drug money. The city records more than 300 homicides per year -- 75 percent drug-related.For the drug addict locked into the madness, salvation is fleeting. Pleas go unheeded, because a lack of available treatment leaves junkies returning to the heroin needle or crack pipe.

In candid conversations yesterday, about 60 Baltimore high school students talked about the increasing pressure to use or sell drugs.They talked about seeing friends' lives get messed up because of drug abuse. One student said most of the 20 close friends he grew up with either died from drugs, are addicted to them or imprisoned.The students spoke at The Urban Medical Institute in a forum organized by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, that featured White House Drug Policy Director Barry R. McCaffrey.

State and federal officials involved in drug control efforts promised yesterday to work to cut drug abuse among youths and adult criminal offenders in Maryland by 20 percent over the next eight years.The promise was the centerpiece of a first-in-the-nation partnership agreement signed by Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.The agreement -- which includes no specific promises of additional federal money -- will allow state and federal officials to work together more closely, Townsend said, and will reduce red tape that can hinder drug-fighting efforts.

IT IS too late for the House Appropriations Committee in Washington to rescue the eight teen-agers from Owings Mills High School who got themselves barred from graduation because they tried to sneak alcohol to their prom.The seniors did receive their diplomas, but as unceremoniously as a six-pack exchanged in a package-store parking lot. The teen-agers disappointed their parents, who weren't able to celebrate their children's accomplishment.Instead, they were left to grouse that "not everyone got punished equally."

In two Baltimore courtrooms adjacent to the one occupied by Mayor Sheila Dixon - known here as defendant Sheila Ann Dixon - here's what happened on Thursday: In one courtroom, Gregory Carmichael pleaded with a judge to get into a program to treat his addiction to alcohol, just one in a parade of substance abusers that morning seeking help instead of jail. In the other courtroom, a judge started picking a jury to try Charles Owens on charges that he shot a man four times in drug-infested Park Heights.

Marianne Woessner is a North Carolina nurse and midwife who sees drug addicts with good jobs and from good families nearly every day. They occupy a hidden world that belies the stereotype of rail-thin junkies stumbling from one street corner to the next in search of a fix. Woessner was the mother of one such drug addict. She made the discovery Sunday night, when a Baltimore police officer called to tell her that her daughter, Carrie Elisabeth John, died that evening after apparently injecting herself with buprenorphine while trying to get high with her boyfriend, Clinton Blaine McCracken, in their rented rowhouse near downtown.

Barack Obama's newly appointed drug czar is looking to Baltimore to help set the nation's strategy, focusing on the city's 15-year-old drug treatment court, which emphasizes therapy over incarceration. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, met with legislators and a drug court judge Monday to discuss the program and collaborative efforts between city, state and federal agencies. It was Kerlikowske's third visit to the city since his May swearing-in. Released prisoners "almost invariably go back to the neighborhood from whence they came," he said after the briefing during a news conference held in the lobby of the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center.

Deaths from alcohol and drug overdoses declined for the second straight year in Baltimore and are at their lowest level since 1995, when the city began recording the data, according to a Health Department report released today. In 2008, 176 people died of a drug overdose in Baltimore, compared with 281 in 2007, a decrease of about one-third. Baltimore health officials called the figures significant and noted that they come at a time when overdose rates in other cities are climbing. They said increased treatment slots, better outreach to addicts and a five-year-old program that teaches drug abusers how to avoid overdosing themselves have contributed to the decline.

Online drug treatment programs can be just as effective as traditional in-person group counseling, at least in the short term, according to a new report by Johns Hopkins researchers. The concept received high praise Friday morning from former U.S. drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was at an announcement of the findings at Baltimore's Institute for Behavioral Resources, a partner in the study. "People need effective, science-based treatment that is appropriate for their community," McCaffrey said.

More than a year after they took the hallucinogen found in "magic mushrooms," volunteers in a Johns Hopkins study rated the experience as one of the most meaningful and spiritually important of their lives, researchers reported today. The results suggest that hallucinogenic compounds, long considered taboo after widespread abuse in the late 1960s, represent both an untapped resource to help people cope with trauma, and a scientific tool for exploring human spirituality, the authors said.

WASHINGTON -- Amid growing illegal sales and abuse of buprenorphine, top federal officials outlined yesterday action they might take to curb problems with the addiction-treatment drug, including more precise detection methods, improved training of doctors and stronger warning labels for patients. "The issue of diversion has been out there since 2004," said Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, which oversees the federal government's buprenorphine initiative.

The heartbreaking death of 2-year-old Bryanna Harris, allegedly at the hands of her mother, is made even more tragic with the release of the inspector general's report and its suggestion that workers in Baltimore's Department of Social Services were negligent in dealing with this family. Most shocking is the revelation that Vernice Harris, the child's mother, went to the city agency a month before Bryanna's death and asked for help, but she was turned away because her past cooperation with the agency had been spotty.

Joining other retailers and chain pharmacies, Giant Food announced yesterday that it won't sell certain types of cough medicine to customers under 18 because the products have been abused by teenagers. Beginning Sunday, Giant and other grocery chains owned by Royal Ahold NV will limit sales of products containing dextromethorphan (DXM), a common ingredient in cough and cold syrups, lozenges and pills. "It's similar to buying cigarettes - if the cashier has a question, we will ask for verification," said Jamie Miller, manager of public affairs for Landover-based Giant Food Inc., which has 186 supermarkets in Maryland and nearby states.

If she were commanding a Broadway stage, Nadria Jennings' ballad, "Hold Me," would be the showstopper. In a sweet soprano, Jennings, 17, sings about children who have lost parents to drugs, AIDS and violence. "All they want," she vocalizes, "is love and a normal life." During a noisy rehearsal in a West Baltimore church, Jennings captures the toll of so many deadly plagues on Baltimore's children, including herself. Her father died when she was 7. When she joined the Nu World Art Ensemble, a performing arts company, three years ago, Jennings found a family, an outlet for her talent, and a way to turn tragedy into art. The work is "healing for me," says the Dr. Samuel L. Banks High School graduate.