Kings Park in the kNOw (KPITK) has been busy fulfilling our mission to educate our community about illegal drugs and substance abuse amongst our youth. We held our annual Proactive Parenting event in October which attracted a crowd of 150 strong. Partnered with the Kings Park Central School district, our event filled the high school auditorium with local parents and teens. The first speaker was Kings Park mother Linda Ventura, while photos of her son’s life rolled in the background Ventura told the story of her beautiful son Thomas who succumbed to heroin addiction at the tender age of 19. Thomas was one of three children who grew up in San Remo – he was your average Kings Park kid, he ate at Anderson’s Deli, played KPY sports and went on to be a popular high school teen that was on both the wrestling team and the lacrosse team. Ventura’s heartfelt presentation was enormously powerful and well received by all present including district administrators and Board of Education members Liz Barrett, Charlie Leo and Diane Nally. The story of Thomas Ventura, although terribly tragic, is not unique. Our region’s youth opiate and heroin epidemic has claimed the lives of over 2,000 young Long Islander’s under the age of 25 in the last decade. A disturbing new reality, the new face of the heroin addict is younger – at the beginning of the epidemic, young adults were about 23 – 25 when they were overdosing. Now they are overdosing in the teens. We recently received some intelligence from our friends in law enforcement that a sixteen year old female was arrested in KP for buying heroin in September.
We are not experts at KPITK but we surround ourselves with the best and brightest in the region and as we do for all of our events, we had an addiction expert on hand in October. Steve Chassman is a dynamic speaker and an integral part of the L.I.C.A.D.D. (Long island Council on Alcohol and Drug Addiction) team and he followed Ventura. He educated the audience about the popular drugs of the day including opiates like prescription pills and heroin in addition to increasingly popular designer drugs likes Molly (Ecstasy laced with Meth Amphetamines) and Synthetic Marijuana. Chassman also delved into the drug he says causes the most damage to our youth – alcohol. He spoke extensively about the dangers of underage drinking and the changes they make in a teen’s brain chemistry. Ventura will be aiding KPITK again in late February when we host a powerful evening for middle school parents and teens.
KPITK hosted our second Narcan training in just six months. Narcan also known as Naloxone is an opiate blocker that reverses overdose from heroin or opiate prescription pain killers like Vicodin or Percocet. Twenty-Eight people filed into the V.F.W. in early November to hear Dr. Jan, an affiliate of L.I.C.A.D.D., speak about the opiate/heroin epidemic. He proceeded to provide a Narcan kit to all present and a prescription for such after training each and every participant in the use of the life-saving drug.
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Free Drug Testing Kits Thank you to KPITK V.P. Melissa McDougal who drove out to Riverhead and ascertained drug testing kits provided by the Suffolk County Sherriff’s Department for Kings Park families. If you need a few please email me at Maureen.L.Rossi@gmail.com We can set up a spot where I can leave some kits and your identity can remain anonymous. Also please feel free to reach out if you need prevention or addiction material, a family treatment program or treatment for your child. For the last seven years we have been helping to get beds for Kings Park kids and support for their families. Every child is Kings Park is precious and worth fighting for.
Bottles and Can Returns We want to thank everyone who has been bringing their recyclables to Leteri Waste Management on Lawrence Road (499) and donating those proceeds to KPITK. The money from those returns is our sole source of income and we are enormously grateful to community members for going out of their way to do that. Special shout out to St. Joseph parishioners for their enormous support with the returns! Every nickel helps our initiatives! Happy Holidays to our friends and neighbors in Kings Park.
