Bellmore-Merrick Parent Center confronts Nassau’s pill epidemic

They’re called “pharm parties," short for pharmacy parties. A group of teenagers –– perhaps as young as 12 and 13 years old –– methodically swipe opiate-based pain killers like Oxycontin and Oxycodone from their parents’ and grandparents’ medicine cabinets, dump the pills into a big bowl when no adult is looking and take turns rolling a die. Whatever number comes up, that’s the number of pills a teen must ingest.

Roll a six, and the teen’s chances of surviving until the next morning drop precipitously, said Steve Chassman, clinical director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, during a talk, “The Dangers in Your Medicine Cabinet: What You Need to Know to Protect Your Children,” at the Brookside School in North Merrick on Wednesday evening.

Chassman, a licensed clinical social worker and graduate of Kennedy High School in Bellmore, was joined by Nassau County Police Detective Pamela Stark to make the presentation, attended by an estimated 50 parents and students. The Bellmore-Merrick Community Parent Center and the Central High School District sponsored the talk to address the growing epidemic of prescription medication abuse, which is claiming the lives of an increasing number of young people.

Wendy Tepfer, the Parent Center’s executive director, thanked Central District Health Director Saul Lerner, Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg and County Executive Ed Mangano for helping to bring the program to the Bellmore-Merrick community.

Chassman said that teens often down several beers along with opiates at a pharm party. The goal, he said, is “to get annihilated.” He noted, though, that painkillers and alcohol are a potentially lethal brew. Long Island, he said, recorded 370 fatal overdoses in 2011, more than one a day.

Traditionally, Chassman said, teens might have begun drug experimentation at age 12 or 13 by stealing a beer from the refrigerator or sneaking into the woods to smoke marijuana, and needed three to five years to graduate to cocaine or heroin. With the advent of pharm parties, however, “they’re quickly moving to the most powerful drugs on the planet,” he said.