Mary didn’t grow up in a ghetto or in dire poverty. She lived in Warren, or maybe Bristol, or perhaps Barrington or some other east bay community. Her family attended church, took her to Disneyworld for her 8th birthday and started saving for college when she was born. Her parents hired a tutor for her. She was sent to Girl Scouts and her mother kept a careful eye on her friends. She wasn’t abused. In fact, you might say she was pampered.

So, you ask, how could Mary or any of our children become a crack addict or a junkie? Because that is what happened to Mary. By the age of 16 she’d tried heroin. At 20, crack cocaine. By the age of 21, she had a $200 a day habit and a criminal record.

What went wrong? How could this happen? There probably is no single answer. A genetic predisposition to addiction. Problems at home. Too much television. Not enough structure. Hanging with the wrong crowd in school. Stress from a learning disability. Undiagnosed emotional problems going back to early childhood. Some untreated trauma. Perhaps unreported sexual or emotional abuse.

Or maybe she just liked getting high and underestimated the addictive qualities of today’s street drugs and found that occasional heroin use was well within her budget. The money she earned from babysitting and gifts from relatives could buy enough heroin at $5 a bag to keep her high every weekend. Who could have known that it would develop into a heroin/crack cocaine habit that would cost her dignity, family and the possibility of a satisfying future life?

Likely her parents had no idea what was wrong. Nor did her teachers or even the counselors her parents dragged her to, one after another, to solve Mary’s "emotional problems."

The simple truth is that most adults in the East Bay have trouble believing that serious drug problems among their children can and do happen here. Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, speed, and designer drugs such as Ecstasy are readily available to our school children if they want them. And many do. Other substances such as glue for sniffing and parental liquor closets are often the easiest to get.

Michelle Berard of Caritas House, a Rhode Island adolescent drug treatment non-profit corporation, says she uses this fact to shock parents into realizing the danger is real and affects children much younger than commonly thought. "By age 13, half of Rhode Island children know someone who sells marijuana and a quarter can tell you the name of someone who sells cocaine or other highly addictive, potentially fatal, substances," says Berard.

Even if we accept the idea that these drugs are available, it is even harder to comprehend the fact that our child might be vulnerable to trying them, and therefore very easy to dismiss the signs of their use.

Take the case of Marty, a 10th grader. Marty had been an A and B student throughout grammar school. Outgoing. Motivated. Sometime in the early 7th grade his parents and teachers began to notice a change. Grades dropped. Marty’s appearance changed. He looked tired and increasingly unkempt. He called it ‘grunge.’ His parents called it a phase. But no one, not even Marty, called it what it was: drug dependency. Like an unfortunate number of 7th graders, Marty had begun to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana. By the time he was "promoted" to the 10th grade he was a daily pot smoker. Before school. At lunch. After school and into the night.

We hear it often said that today’s marijuana is far stronger than it was back in the days of 60’s flower power. This means that the drugs are both more affordable and that they are more psychologically addictive and damaging to growing minds. It is also disturbing to note that the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, THC, varies greatly. One batch can have 300% the THC as another, which means the response is far from predictable. Plus there is always the issue of additives, such as PCP which are occasionally in the pot sold to children in our state.

What will happen to Marty? Will he move onto harder drugs or just stay with pot and alcohol? Either way, he will have lost much of his reasoning skills, memory and motivation. Years he should have spent growing and exploring will have gone up in smoke and won’t be able to be retrieved. Maybe he will become like his friend Hank from Warren who prides himself on tripping at school everyday on LSD.

Increasing numbers of Rhode Island’s teenagers use ecstasy and "designer drugs". Occasionally you read about one that dies from their use. More often the kids just come home disoriented and depressed.

So, you ask what can you do if you think there are problems? A good place to start is calling the Rhode Island Alcohol and Drug Abuse Hotline at 800-622-7422. They will send you some useful literature including a pamphlet on recognizing the signs of drug use in teenagers and pre-teens. If you are at the point of seeking treatment for your child, there are several starting points; East Bay choices. You might call the East Bay Mental Health Center at 431-9870, CODAC at 434-4999 or Caritas House at 722-4644.

Caritas House can also put you in touch with a program called Parent-to-Parent. Here parents who have already been through the emergency room stage of child drug use share their experiences, successful and failures with parents who want to know more before they reach that stage. And, if you have a group such as a civic, social or church club, Susan Wallace founder of Caritas House will be glad to give your group a talk and opportunity for questions. She is a nationally respected authority with 30 years experience in dealing with Rhode Island children who use drugs, and sometimes die from them. You can reach the Parent-to-Parent program by calling 722-4644.

Here are the facts:

Rhode Island Juvenile Drug Use

These frightening statistics are not adapted to Rhode Island from large national studies that include deprived, inner city communities. They are reports of what our children tell researchers when anonymity is promised. Maybe it is time for open communication with our children.

In 1997 47% of Rhode Island high school students surveyed had smoked marijuana at least once. 29.7% reported using it once or more times in the 30 days before the survey (Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance – United States).

7% of Rhode Island High School students report using cocaine at least once (60% of those report using it in its highly addictive crack cocaine form) and 3.8% say they used cocaine in the last 30 days.

2.5% of Rhode Island High School Students report having injected an illegal drug.

20.7% of Rhode Island High School students report having used inhalants.

5.8% of Rhode Island high School students have used illegal steroids, a growing trend in our state amongst boys and girls.

8th graders nationally who have used illicit drugs have risen from 11% in 1991 to20% in 2000.

52% of 8th graders nationally have tried alcohol and14% of them report binge drinking (5 drinks or more at a single occasion) within the prior two weeks.

Admission to emergency rooms for heroin-related problems increased 400% from 1991 to 1996.

The high-risk years for children’s first use of illegal drugs begins at age 12.

Sources: University of Michigan studies; National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 1998; National PTA Study for Common Sense program and the Drug Policy Information ClearingHouse.