Home Drug Tests Given to L.I. Parents

Suffolk County is taking a stand in what could be considered as a war against drugs that's happening on the homefront.

Parents in this community are learning that drug abuse doesn't just happen in bad neighborhoods and to bad kids; it happens everywhere and to anyone --and its abuse can start in their own medicine cabinets.

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In an effort to help parents in the fight against this suburban drug problem, Suffolk County and school officials distributed 350 free home drug test kits Monday night to parents at a meeting at Patchogue-Medford High School.

"We are going to empower the parents," said Suffolk County's Jack Eddington, who proposed the drug test kit program to the school district. "We are going to stem the tide of this epidemic."

The urine drug kits, made by Dallas-based Drug Test Your Teen, can detect presence of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines, opiates, amphetamines and benzodiazepines.

"I'm here as a concerned parent," said Laurie Hummel, 39, of Medford, who took a kit for her teenage daughter. "It's important to trust, but it's also important to question. I'm probably going to use the test when my daughter's not expecting it, maybe after a weekend out with friends, on a Sunday night."

Should their children's drug test results come out positive, the parents were given a list of available community and health resources to contact.

Drugs are unfortunately easy to come by.

WCBS-TV recently reported that "70 percent of the time teens get the potentially deadly pills from a friend or at home," according to Jamie Bogenschutz of the YES Community Counseling Center in Massapequa, who counsels teens about drugs.

"We're losing great kids who just make poor decisions. It is not stopping, it is getting worse," she told WCBS-TV. "Parents need to be aware, be vigilant, they need to, at the very least, go through their medicine cabinets."

Just a few days before the Suffolk County meeting, two 16-year-old girls were arrested at Smithtown High School West.