PAOLI — Risks to young people because of the use of methamphetamine, heroin and spice (synthetic marijuana) were highlighted during a substance abuse workshop presented Thursday in Paoli.
Leading the session was Paul Andry, an investigator with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and a former drug enforcement officer with Indiana State Police. Andry talked of the high instances of child neglect and abuse that threaten young children whose parents use meth. But, given that the session was sponsored by the Indiana Youth Institute, much of the emphasis was on the dangers teenagers are facing with the drugs they are choosing to abuse. The drugs of choice for that demographic, Andry said, typically isn’t meth.
“Predominantly, the kids we are seeing using meth are the sons and daughters of people who are using meth,” Andry said, “and that’s how they’ve gotten into it. ... But it is still not the kid drug that the spice is, and even the heroin, that’s the scary part about it. Heroin is more of a kid drug than methamphetamine. ... We’re seeing a lot more heroin in younger ages than we are meth.”
Andry said heroin surpassed prescription drugs in terms of abuse by younger people.
He also said heroin leads to “huge numbers of overdoses.”
He described heroin users as often being very sad. “It’s an opiate. It’s a downer,” Andry said. He said those who use heroin often have trouble driving and making conversation, and they often become violent “because they are desperate.” Andry said some users build up a tolerance, but a new user can die instantly from taking large dosages because they haven’t developed a tolerance.
Andry said, “You can’t ask your buddy, ‘How much should I take?’ because if they’re a hard-core heroin user, it’s a lot to get the same effect as this person (a new user) would get with a little. ... A lot of times it instantaneously kills.”
Andry also warned of the dangers of spice, which he said came on the scene about four or five years ago.
“It came on as this legal cannabis, and they are for the most part cannabinoids. ... It came as a legal way to smoke, and they sold it in smoke shops and they put on it ‘not for human consumption’ and sold it for $50 a bag.”
He continued, “For that most part, at that point, it was young people who started using this stuff and the results have been disastrous. We’ve had huge numbers of overdoses. We have had all kinds of hallucinogenic situations. ... These spice users are as addicted to that as anything I’ve ever seen.”
Andry said a complicating issue in enforcement of laws related to the use of spice is that the appellate court in Indiana struck down the spice law as being too vague. “It is currently in the state Supreme Court right now over whether our spice law is going to be upheld,” he added.
He explained the chemicals for spice are being made in major chemical laboratories in China.
“And, every time, we put one of these out there and say this is illegal, they change the molecular makeup by one thing, and it’s a new drug. It’s not the same thing,” Andry said. “So, it’s a very difficult drug for us to even enforce because the laws are so difficult to understand even for us. We can’t just arrest somebody because a lot of times, we don’t know if what they’re carrying has been scheduled even though we know it causes all kinds of issues.
“This is the scariest thing, I think, going for young people because it has been touted as a safe alternative (to marijuana), and it’s anything but (safe).”
He said an Internet search for “spice death memorials” leads to a website focusing on people whose deaths resulted from use of spice. “It will take you to just situation after situation where these people ... a lot of them it sounds like have never been drug users before, but they’ve used this and they’ve committed suicide or they’ve committed homicide or they’ve died of an overdose.”
Concerning availability of spice, Andry said, “It’s no longer just out on the shelves, but where it comes from a lot of times are these little old markets that are along the roads that may have used to have been Shell stations, but now they’re not anymore. They’re just some little roadside mart. ... We shut them down, and they go somewhere else and start again because they know it’s difficult for us to deal with.”
Andry explained spice is “herbs and plants that have been sprayed with a chemical.”
He noted, “A lot of times, it almost looks like potpourri. It’s not inside the plants at all. ... It’s in these little packages that have smiley faces on it. ... It’s just sprayed with a chemical.
“It’s a bad drug. ... We don’t know what the long-term effects are going to be.”