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Bellmore-Merrick Parent Center, heroin task force sponsoring drug takeback

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Every day, 2,500 teens across the country, ages 12 to 17, get high off prescription drugs, and 70 percent of them obtain their narcotics from family members or friends –– most often by swiping them from bathroom medicine cabinets, according to Wendy Tepfer, executive director of the Bellmore-Merrick Community Parent Center.

That is why, Tepfer said, the center is co-sponsoring the first Bellmore-Merrick Drug Takeback Day on Saturday, Sept. 27 — National Drug Takeback Day — at Brookside School in North Merrick. Also joining in the effort are the Bellmore-Merrick Heroin Task Force, the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District and Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick who is running for State Senate.

Nassau County police will collect all drugs for proper disposal.

The event, Tepfer said, is a kickoff for a larger informational campaign by the heroin task force to get the word out to the community that prescription drug abuse is rampant across Nassau County, and it’s fueling the current heroin epidemic, as opioid medications are considered a “gateway” to heroin.

“We have dangerous, dangerous drugs in our houses,” Tepfer said. “We have drugs in our houses that are desired by people who want drugs.”

Saul Lerner, the Bellmore-Merrick Central District’s director of health, phys. ed. and athletics, said he was shocked when he learned that many drug addicts attend open houses of homes for sale so they can rifle through their medicine cabinets in search of prescription drugs –– which sell for $30 to $60 per pill on the black market.

Narcotics such as Oxycontin, Percocet and Vycodin, prescribed by doctors for pain relief after procedures ranging from tooth extractions to back surgeries and chemotherapy, are “unsecured and free –– and they’re in your medicine cabinet,” Lerner said.

David Seinfeld, the newly appointed Bellmore-Merrick Central District assistant superintendent for instruction, started the heroin task force with Denenberg last spring, after several Calhoun High School graduates died of heroin overdoses over the winter. The heroin was reportedly laced with Fentanyl, a prescription pain medication.

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