By Michelle Seeber, CNHI News Service
WAYNOKA — Darrell Weaver, director of Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, shared a story with Waynoka residents during a forum Wednesday night on how to stamp out drug abuse in town.
“In the first week of July in 2001, I was running a drug enforcement (operation) out of Oklahoma City in the rural Lincoln County area,” he said. “I got a call that a drug dealer had been killed. When I got to the scene, he was lying dead on the floor in his bathroom. He was naked with a sawed off shotgun in one hand and methamphetamine in the other.”
“He died with his hand in the toilet, naked, in his own bathroom.”
In the fight against drug abuse, “we’re fighting for every child in this community,” he told more than 150 Waynoka residents who had gathered in the school’s all-purpose building to hear legislators and state officials speak on the issue of drugs.
The problem, Weaver said, is not only methamphetamine and other illegal street drugs.
“We have a prescription drug problem in Oklahoma,” Weaver said. “Last year 86 percent of the drug-related deaths in Oklahoma were from overdoses of prescription drugs.”
He also spoke about Nathan Lyon, a Waynoka teen who died Jan. 4 from injuries sustained several days earlier when acid was thrown on him during a fight. Jason Michael Nelson, 32, has been charged in Lyon’s death.
It was Lyon’s death that led Waynoka residents to conduct the forum to learn how to address drug problems.
Many people at the forum wore T-shirts bearing pictures of Lyon and the words, “In Memory of Nathan Lyon, 1990 to 2009.”
“There’s no greater tragedy than losing your child,” Weaver said. “Nathan’s death is not in vain. I believe we can figure out” a solution to ridding the community of drug abuse.
Mark Woodward, OBN information and education officer, also spoke.
He said the biggest threat to the community was not only drugs.
“It’s our attitude,” he said. “People want to use drugs. It’s a choice people make.
“We’ve glamorized drug use in the movies and on TV,” he said. “So many kids say, What’s the big deal about marijuana?’ I have seen marijuana wreck so many lives. That’s where it starts.
“Adults need to talk to kids and educate them about what’s going on,” Woodward said. “Let your kids know it’s dangerous, it’s wrong, and it’s an addiction.”
He said people ask how to tell whether a kid is doing drugs.
“Kids go through medicine cabinets,” he said. “Some trade pills and sell them straight out. We’ve got pockets in every community where kids use cough syrup and gypsum weed that grows wild out here.
“If you suspect you have a child that has a drug issue ... look for stuff that’s missing or out of place,” he said. “Odors are a big sign. Hug your kids and take a big whiff. You can smell it.”
He said other signs include weight loss, missing school and hanging out with different people than before.
While parents need to know whether their children are abusing drugs, they also need to know how to treat the problem. According to Terry White, Oklahoma secretary of health and commissioner of the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, prison time does not make addicts stop using and dealing drugs.
Law enforcement “has been arresting people for years, and it doesn’t work,” White said. “Treatment is the best deterrent.”
A Waynoka parent in the audience, Tim Crissup, spoke to White on the issue.
“In a small community, if you put one of a kid’s buddies away for doing drugs, it’ll make kids think. I think that’s a deterrent.”
Maybe that would work in Waynoka, White said, “but research shows it doesn’t work.”
District Attor-ney Hollis Thorp also discussed the issue.
“I’ve sent some to prison and I’ve sent some to jail,” he said.
But, he said, “I also agree we need treatment for these young people. When they get out, they go back to using drugs.”
Trudy Hoffman, executive director of Northwest Center of Behavioral Health and Substance Abuse in Woodward said a meeting would be scheduled in Waynoka to start a coalition to look at drug abuse issues.
“We need law enforcement, students, parents and grandparents,” she said. “Sign up and leave an e-mail address and your name.”
Chelsea Head, a Waynoka High School student, said after the meeting she agreed with what Crissup said about arresting drug abusers and sending them to jail.
“I personally know people I wish didn’t have a problem,” she said. “Until there’s more enforcement there won’t be enough of a deterrent to stop teenagers and young adults in abuses and use of drugs in Waynoka.”
Rep. Jeff Hickman, R-Fairview, and Sen. Bryce Marlatt, R-Woodward, were hosts of the forum.
Seeber writes for the Woodward News.
