Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Red Ribbon Week runs through the end of this month.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
GIRARD -- Drugs don't make you look cool; they make you act lazy, says Gina Martini, 9, a fourth-grader at Girard Intermediate School.
"You shouldn't do something just because you think it makes you cool, because nothing good will happen; something bad will happen," added Emily Marsh, 10, also a fourth-grader.
The girls' revelations followed a presentation Monday by Douglas Lamplugh, agent in charge of the Youngstown office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The agent spoke to all grades at the school as part of the anti-drug Red Ribbon Week, which runs through the end of October.
Lamplugh plans presentations at other Trumbull County schools this week.
Hailey Noufer, 9, said she learned that a person who takes drugs to feel good eventually has to take more drugs just to feel normal.
"That's how you get addicted," Hailey said.
Lamplugh told the pupils that he needs their help to encourage others to stay away from drugs. It's young people who will determine the future of drugs in this country.
The DEA and other law enforcement agencies can arrest drug dealers, but there's always someone there waiting to take that dealer's place, Lamplugh said.
Don't buy it
"Each of you are the future customers for the drug dealers," the agent said. "If nobody wants to buy them, they aren't worth anything."
The drug business works on supply and demand.
"As long as there are people who want drugs, there's always going to be someone greedy enough to sell them drugs," Lamplugh said. "There are a lot of greedy people in the world."
He educated the children about the costs of drugs and the kinds most popular in the Mahoning Valley.
A marijuana addict can spend up to $18,000 a year to support his habit while the costs for a heroin addict jump to about $100,000 per year, Lamplugh said.
"But there are costs that you can't add up," he said. "There's the inability of an addict to hold a job and if the addict has a family and children to support, the inability of the kids to fulfill their dreams."
Winning the war
Contrary to some peoples' views that law enforcement is losing the war on drugs, Lamplugh contends that there are half as many regular drug users today as there were in 1979.
Red Ribbon Week started in the 1980s in California in honor of Enrique Camarena, a DEA agent who was kidnapped and murdered by drug traffickers.
denise_dick@vindy.com