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| Vigil To Honor Children Lost To Drug Abuse |
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Posted by CN Staff on June 07, 2006 at 22:15:58 PT By Keyonna Summers, The Washington Times Source: Washington Times 
Washington, DC -- The telephone call that forever changed Therese Pelicano's life came in the middle of the night two years ago. "The police have called, and Dominic is gone," Ms. Pelicano recalls her ex-husband saying to her on the phone about their 23-year-old son. "It's like your life stops," the Damascus resident says of her son's fatal heroin overdose May 11, 2004. "I didn't believe it, and I just wanted to see him. It's hard even now. It has been two years, and a part of me now doesn't believe it." Ms. Pelicano, 51, is among an estimated 600 parents from across the country who will attend the "Vigil for a Lost Promise" tonight in Arlington, where victims of drug abuse will be honored by their families during a candlelight ceremony. For the first time, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is teaming up with other agencies and drug prevention groups to hold the vigil, which will feature music, photographs and speeches. It is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at 700 Army Navy Drive in Arlington. Catherine Harnett, chief of DEA's Demand Reduction Office, said the issue of drug abuse is often reduced to statistics. "One of the purposes of the vigil is to really bring to light the fact that ... drug abuse is a problem that is not limited to any particular socioeconomic class or neighborhood," she said. There appears to be no central agency that collects information on drug-related deaths, but a 2004 report in Journal of the American Medical Association showed that an estimated 17,000 people in the U.S. died from illicit drug use in 2000. The Office of National Drug Control Policy indicates that more than 800 drug-induced deaths were reported in Maryland in 2003, and the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported 498 drug-caused deaths in 2004. Statistics were not available for the District. The vigil will focus on deaths by substances such as alcohol, inhalants and prescription medicine and by illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Parents and specialists say victims of drug abuse face a stigma: Police and other parents sometimes feel less sympathetic because the victims had made a conscious choice to take the drugs that cost them their lives. "I belong to a support group for people who have lost children, but sometimes it's difficult even in that environment because someone will say, 'My son was a good kid and he never did drugs,' " Ms. Pelicano said. "My son was a good kid and he did do drugs, and that addiction is a disease and I don't want people to think less of that." Dominic was an aspiring artist and a senior who was on the dean's list at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. He grappled with anxiety and mental health issues since childhood, began using marijuana in high school and battled addiction to doctor-prescribed medications, Ms. Pelicano said. A mugging the night before his death likely prompted Dominic to ingest a liquid mixture of heroin and methadone to calm his nerves, she said. "He was self-medicating and under treatment and was supposed to enter rehab. He told me he knew this problem was bigger than he was," Ms. Pelicano said. Some of Dominic's artwork and his father's band, in which Dominic was a guitarist, will be displayed tonight. Joyce Nalepka, president of the Silver Spring-based Drug Free Kids: America's Challenge, said she hopes the vigil will urge families to connect and form local support groups. "We need national leadership," said Miss Nalepka, who also is an advocate of student drug-testing and family involvement with children to prevent drug use. Related Articles & Web Site: Tom and Rollie Memorial Page A Searing Portrait of Abuse Family Files Lawsuit in Rainbow Death Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #6 posted by FoM on June 08, 2006 at 07:32:08 PT |
| Storm Crow I removed the extra post. I am only mentioning it because comment 2 is missing and people wonder where it went. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #5 posted by FoM on June 08, 2006 at 07:29:07 PT |
| They are showing us the dead body of Al-Zarqawi. Our news has really gotten bad to show dead people like they do. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by Storm Crow on June 08, 2006 at 06:52:45 PT |
| Way back in 1969(?), the US government came up with "Operation Intercept" which closed down the Mexican border. During the weeks that the border was virtually closed to all traffic, the pot supply dried up totally. Many of the kids I knew, turned to speed and downers as a substitute. Quite a few of them didn't quit their substitute drug when the pot returned. I lost friends then, to drug induced madness and death due to overdoses. Cannabis doesn't kill, but our insane prohibition surely killed my friends. We need to get cannabis out of the black market and into the free market. By removing the cannabis market from the black market, we remove the exposure to other, more harmful, drugs. Who would pay half the price of gold for flowers they could grow in a window box? Legalize it! [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by ekim on June 08, 2006 at 06:50:40 PT |
| Progressive ideas for the Dem party. Somewhere there has to be a site to blog on Cannabis reform. Does anyone have info on this conference and how to effect change. billed as uniting the netroots. yearly convention in Las Vegas now -june 11. [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #1 posted by Marc Paquette on June 08, 2006 at 02:37:09 PT:
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| "The vigil will focus on deaths by substances such as alcohol, inhalants and prescription medicine and by illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana." But who exactly died from "marijuana" when this medicinal herb is non-toxic? There isn't "1" medical authority in this world who can prove that marijuana ever killed in over 5,000 years of medicinal history! Marc [ Post Comment ] |
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