Community Corner

Jello? Whipped Cream? Bath Salts? (Video)

It all sounds innocent enough, but sometimes those innocuous sounding products can contain alcohol, deadly drugs, and a world of trouble for the youths abusing them.

Catherine LeVasseur has three pieces of advice for parents who want to help their kids stay off drugs and alcohol.

First, talk with your kids.

Second, talk with each other. Find out what other parents are seeing and hearing.

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Third, know what's out there.

That third piece of advice is where it can get scary, she says, because some of the alcohol and drug products currently on the market are easily accessible to youths, diabolically designed to mimic child-friendly products, and some of them are potentially lethal.

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Just like the snacks you would put in someone's lunch box

"There are alcoholic jello shots, packaged just like the snacks you would put in someone's lunch box," said LeVasseur, a program manager with the Governor's Prevention Partnership, who was one of the featured speakers at a recent multi-town symposium sponsored by the Madison Alcohol and Drug Education (MADE) Coalition. "There is adult chocolate milk. There is alcoholic whipped cream. And the marketing is deceptive so it can be easily confused with the snacks."

She also said some youths experiment with potentially dangerous ways of consuming alcohol, including pouring vodka into their eyeballs.

"The people eyeballing are usually already drunk," she said. "Usually it's an intoxicated person at a party and he becomes the guinea pig."

Efforts to get drunk quickly can backfire

What can seem funny to that person's friends can end up creating damage to the cornea so significant that it can lead to blindness, LeVasseur said. Other youths have tried vodka snorting, she said, in an effort to get drunk quickly.

Then there are products designed to help youths, and others, sneak alcohol into events, including slim plastic flasks and a beer belly that can be worn underneath clothing.

There is even a game where the object is to "have a positive encounter with a police officer when you are under-aged and drinking."

Underage club attendance usually a bad idea

LeVasseur also said parents should be wary about clubs that allow underage youths to attend. The theory is that only those with certain wristbands are served. But that sometimes is not the case, she said.

LeVasseur was once at a bar in New Haven as part of an enforcement effort to check to see if under-aged patrons were being served. As part of these initiatives, teenagers are trained and then sent in to see if they can obtain alcohol. At this particular bar "our kids got served, no problem ... they give out wristbands, but the bartenders don't care once you get inside."

While LeVasseur was there, she saw a 19-year-old transported to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.

18 and over clubs hard to regulate

When it became clear that a liquor control enforcement effort was underway, the DJ warned the patrons and asked everyone to "whip off their wristbands and drop their drinks" so that no one could be prosecuted," LeVasseur said. "The DJ was arrested and charged with interfering with a police operation, but it just shows that at the 18 and over clubs, it's just so hard to regulate."

She also said a product referred to as bath salts is becoming increasingly popular. The subject of an article in The New York Times on Sunday, bath salts are a stimulant that can lead to extreme agitation, violent behavior and, in some cases, psychotic behavior.

"Poison control centers around the country received 3,470 calls about bath salts from January through June, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, up from 303 in all of 2010," said the article in The New York Times. "'Some of these folks aren’t right for a long time,' said Karen E. Simone, director of the Northern New England Poison Center. 'If you gave me a list of drugs that I wouldn’t want to touch, this would be at the top.'"

Bath salts, synthetic marijuana, synthetic cocaine sometimes sold in gas stations, rest stops

LeVasseur said synthetic marijuana also is sometimes sold in gas stations and head shops, along with the bath salts, synthetic cocaine that is passed off as "plant food," and other hallucinogenic products. Some of these drugs have been outlawed in Connecticut and other states, but the manufacturers of these drugs then sometimes just change the chemical composition of the drugs, and the packaging, to get around those laws, LeVasseur said.

Still, alcohol and prescription drugs, remain major problems when it comes to youths trying to get high, she said. Alcohol is still the number one drug of choice for youth, and Connecticut's kids drink at a rate that is 26 to 28 percent higher than their peers nationally.

When it comes to prescription drugs, 42 percent of all emergency room visits for prescription drug abuse are for youths aged 12 to 20, and 70 percent of children who abuse prescription drugs get them from family and friends.

"You have a voice, use it"

At the MADE conference last week, LeVasseur encouraged the attendees, including about 60 youths and about 20 adults, to speak out against deceptive marketing, to challenge students who wear hats or t-shirts with messages about drugs or alcohol, and to send letters of protest to alcohol industry executives.

"Start a conversation. Stand up to peer pressure. Have a plan. Find your passion and go with it," she said. "You have a voice, use it."

LeVasseur was one of several featured speakers at the MADE conference. In addition to the speakers, the youths at the conference were broken up into "tribes," with about six to eight students from each school. Towns represented included East Haven; Branford; Guilford:  Madison; Clinton; Westbrook; Old Saybrook   Tri-town (Chester, Deep River, Essex) and Haddam-Killingworth.

The students were then provided with training about substance abuse prevention and activities that can contribute to leading a healthy lifestyle; information about leadership, public speaking, teamwork, and planning; and they were encouraged to make connections with students in other communities with similar lifestyles/philosophies, and interests.

Josh Therriault, a student from Central Connecticut State University, also spoke with the students about how to develop public service announcements against alcohol and drug abuse. The conference was supported in part by the Wine  and  Spirits  Wholesalers  of Connecticut,  Inc.

Information about some of the substances is available in the PDFs next to this article, along with information on how to talk with your children about this. Additional information is available on theParents Resource Center on the Governor's Prevention Partnership website.


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