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Community Corner

Parents, Teachers Attend Informational Meeting on Kids and Substance Abuse

Survey results surprising to those in attendance.

Parents of East Hampton students are concerned about their teenagers abusing substances. This was clear in a meeting held Monday night by the Middlesex County Substance Abuse Action Council (MCSAAC) and the East Hampton Local Prevention Council (LPC).

MCSAAC is a non-profit organization that seeks to understand and prevent substance abuse. The East Hampton LPC is an off-shoot of MCSAAC, made up of volunteers who sponsor prevention programs in the town, according to their web site.

About 20 people attended the meeting at the Goff House in East Hampton. Most who attended were parents and teachers who wanted to hear information about the kinds of drugs their children could be, or are already, exposed to, and what they can do to prevent it.

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“The Local Prevention Council would like to raise the awareness of what kids are exposed to,” said Irene Kuck, a volunteer.

Betsey Chadwick, director of MCSAAC, led the meeting, sharing statistics from a survey taken recently among high school and middle school students and their parents in East Hampton. The results are compared with other surveys given in the state or region.

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Some of the local survey findings appeared to astonish parents at the meeting. For instance, around 27 percent of high school students in East Hampton reported in the survey that they had smoked tobacco in the last 30 days.

Another dramatic finding was how much children’s perceptions of substance abuse change from middle to high school. A low percentage of middle school children indicated in the survey that they thought underage drinking was OK. However, a high rate of high school teens thought underage drinking was OK. This flip seemed to concern many parents in the audience. Chadwick said it’s important to get the statistical information to more people in East Hampton.

“I look forward to working with the Local Prevention Council,” she said.

MCSAAC’s core funding comes from the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. The LPC gets funding from federal block grants. The amount of money given for these grants depend on the size of the town. East Hampton gets around $3,100 a year.

Robert Powers, director of Connecticut’s Controlled Substance/Toxicology Laboratory presented the topic of “Bath Salts,” a drug also known as “K2,” “Spice” and “Mountain Climbing."

Powers explained to parents how the drug was made legal. The active components of marijuana are mixed with herbal mixtures, which can then be smoked.

“What happened is they were basically creating a pseudo-marijuana,” Powers said.

The synthetic drug labeled as "bath salts" is not intended for the tub. The packets, which often carry a label saying they are not for human consumption, are sold at gas stations, tobacco shops and over the Internet.

Reacting to concerns over the drug's rising use, Florida, Louisiana and New Jersey have recently banned the sale, manufacturing and possession of it.

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