LEONARD GRAY and ERIK SANZENBACH / L’Observateur / December 22, 1999

(First of two parts) So how bad is the drug abuse problem among high school students? Just ask Webb Jordan, 17, and he has a surprising answer.

“They’re out there,” he said about drugs. “They’re really easy to get holdof.”Jordan, an admitted former drug user, said you could probably talk to high school students and find that four of five have done some kind of drug.

“You can go into a classroom today and, I would say, you could pick out maybe five people you know do not do drugs,” he said. “The rest of them,you know maybe they’re really not into drugs but you know they’ve tried them.”While Jordan’s problems occurred in St. Charles Parish, he said it doesn’tjust happen there.

“It’s all over,” he said. “I really do believe that St. Charles Parish hassome of the best schools in the state. But just the denial of people, thathas to be worked at. People need to realize there is a problem.”*** Whatever you may think of the drug scene in St. Charles Parish, it’sprobably worse. At least that’s the view of someone close to the action -Lt. Don Carter, narcotics detective for the St. Charles Sheriff’s Office.However, Carter does hold out hope for the future, as the current generation of high school students move on and the current middle-school students move up into high school.

He said he’s seeing DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) programs in the lower school grades have its desired impact.

“They’re doing a great job of getting to the younger kids,” Carter commented, “and the resource officers are doing a great job.”He said the current high school drug problems escalated two years ago to its current pervasive level, but the coming generation “have their act together. It’s just a different mind-set with these kids now, way morepositive against drugs.”Like Carter, Lt. Octavio Gonzalez, head of the narcotics division for the St.John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s Office, knows there’s a drug problem in the area. But he, too, is fairly upbeat about the fight against drugs in hisparish.

There are small areas in every part of St. John Parish that have drugs,” hesaid. “But slowly and surely, we are chipping away at the problem.”St. John Parish Sheriff Wayne Jones said drug arrests have gone up by 35percent in recent years. But he added things always weren’t so good.”When I first came in as sheriff back in 1996 I was well aware of the drug problem in the parish, ” Jones said. “We had a big problem with crack andpowder cocaine. Arrests were being made, but repeat offenders weretaking too long in the system and they were getting back on the street.”*** Carter, 35, is a 10-year law enforcement veteran with more than eight of those years working in narcotics. His office wall is half-covered incitations and training completion certificates. He’s a quietly powerfulman with an easy smile. A family man, he was born in Norco and now livesin Hahnville with his wife and children, who range in age from 1 to 13 years old.

He’s worked undercover in other parishes and has seen drug trafficking first hand, besides seeing the effects of drugs on people’s lives – especially young people.

“Some kids have been using for years, and their parents have no idea,” Carter said of the local drug scene. “Parents are in denial. They don’t wantto hear their children are using drugs.”Jordan said his parents had few clues to his drug use.

Born in Metairie with cerebral palsy, Jordan underwent several surgeries as he was growing up. That, along with frequent relocations until thefamily settled in Ormond when he was 12 years old, “always set me apart from kids my age.”During his eighth-grade year, the same year he had a major leg operation, he said he started smoking and drinking.

“I guess because I lost contact with many of my friends, I got into the wrong crowd and it was pretty much downhill from that point,” he said.

It was in the eighth grade, for instance, that he was suspended for a week for bringing gin to school.

Going to Destrehan High School he was isolated, estranged from old friends he hadn’t seen all summer as he had just come out of the hospital.

Mixing with the wrong crowd, he said, showed him how easy it was to get drugs, from marijuana to cocaine to LSD.

“I guess with all my illnesses. I was sick or asleep all the time,” heexplained as to why his parents may not have seen what was happening to him.

Jordan said drugs were readily accessible to him.

“Basically, for me, it was just picking up the phone,” he said. “Beforelong, it was a matter of people playing phone tag with each other and it would take about 20-30 minutes. It was very easy.”Often, someone would have something and he would get $5 or $10 or $15 from his parents to spend time with friends. He’d spend the money ondrugs.

The drugs and slipping grades prompted Jordan’s mother to have him home-schooled, but the teacher didn’t turn in his grades and he essentially lost his entire freshman year.

“My mom was more upset than I was,” Jordan recalled. “I was living lifeto have a good time.”Jordan wasn’t living that life alone, Carter said.

He said the majority of high school students in St. Charles Parish haveexperimented with drugs, but he stressed there is a small, hardcore group of users and dealers which does not represent the whole.

“The availability is unbelievable,” Carter said. “Most of these parents aretotally naive as to what these kids are doing.”The usual practice is the weekend party, where drugs are common, more often than after-school use.

Penetrating drug-use practice among teen-agers is admittedly the toughest to manage. There is a scarcity of undercover officers who couldpass for high school students and the difficulty is compounded on that level.

“They really put you to the test,” Carter said. “It’s the hardest arena toput an undercover officer into.”He said the officer has to set up a fake house and parent to lull suspicion, and a “new student” has to prove himself to get into the drug crowd.

Among black adult users, he said, “It’s fairly easy to work your way into the crowd.” Among white adult users, he said, “It takes knowing someoneto actually get you into the door.”*** The drug of choice among local teen-agers today is LSD, that hallucinogen popularized in the 1960s, according to Carter. Readily available in sheetsof chewable tabs, it’s used equally by girls and boys.

On the streets among adult drug abusers the drug of choice is crack cocaine. Heroin is also making a comeback, Carter said, despite thecurrent fears of AIDS.

“It’s much purer nowadays,” he said. “You may start seeing moreoverdoses.”There are five major drugs on the streets of St. John Parish that keepGonzales and his team of narcotics officers concerned, including the two most popular, crack cocaine and methamphetamine.

Crack cocaine, Gonzales said, is used mostly by people between the ages of 21 and 45. Methamphetamine, also called speed or crank, is popularwith users ranging in age between 18 and 37. This drug is used primarilyby caucasians.

Other drugs being found frequently by the St. John narcotics division arepowder cocaine, being used by people between the ages of 18 and 40; marijuana or grass or pot, being used by a younger class of user from 15 years of age on up; and pharmaceutical drugs such as depressants, amphetamines etc., used by people from their mid-20’s to their mid-30’s.Like methamphetamine, this is drug used primarily by caucasians.

“Drugs are everywhere,” admitted Gonzalez, “but at least here, the amounts are a lot smaller than in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. What we’retrying to do is minimize the drug dealing in the parish.”Carter said there is a strong correlation between illicit drug use and crime in his parish, especially burglaries, thefts and robberies, most of which are committed to finance a drug habit. Either the stolen items aresold at pawn shops or traded directly with the drug dealers.

Most of the drug trafficking in St. Charles Parish is small-time dealers,the “amateurs” or “retailers.”However, St. Charles Parish deputies recently busted its first “meth lab”in early October. With the influx of population from Orleans and Jeffersonparishes, law enforcement is constantly challenged to keep up with the pressure.

“The amount of dope coming into the United States is unbelievable, compared to what’s caught by law enforcement officials,” Carter said.

“Eleven to 12 percent is caught at the border. A dealer may send 20 18-wheelers and one may get stopped.”Recently in St. John Parish, narcotics officers and the Drug EnforcementAgency busted two methamphetamine labs, arrested over 28 dealers and users on Pine Street and hauled in a cache of cocaine that weighed in at 7 pounds.

One of the reasons for all these busts, according to Gonzalez, is the community.

“The community helps out a lot,” he said. “They tip us off. If it wasn’t forthe community, we wouldn’t know where this stuff was.”*** Jordan spent most of his sophomore and junior years trying to make up the grades he messed up on as a freshman, but early in this school term he got out and is now pursuing a general equivalency diploma.

And his life is turned around, he said, because he became a Christian.

“Now I get my high off of God,” he said. “It’s a high you don’t get ahangover from, and there’s no regrets from it.”Last February, a friend took Jordan to River Region Fellowship Church and he had “a born-again type of experience.” He said that got him to stopdrinking for about two months, though he fell back for a time and even sustained a mild stroke. But he returned to church and rededicated his lifeto Jesus.

Jordan said he still has an occasional craving for drugs, but he said with the acceptance of Christ he now says, “Jesus, you’re my strength.”He urges young people not to rely only on their own strength, either to resist temptation or to bring themselves back.

“I really think talking to your parents is the key,” he said. “You can’t relyonly on yourself. I couldn’t have done it without Him.”Law enforcement officials agree.

“Where it all starts is at home,” said Jones. “The parents have to takesome responsibility. Unfortunately, in today’s society not everybody islike the Cleavers.”Carter agreed, and said he urges parents to get their own acts together and be more observant of their children and friends.

Teen-agers going through unusual mood swings or radical behavior changes could be using LSD. Drastic weight loss can sometimes be linked to crack-cocaine use, he said.

“And,” Carter said, “marijuana gives you the munchies.”Carter said parents need to know it is “perfectly legal for a parent to search every nook and cranny of their child’s room,” and he urges parents to be aware of where their children go, and with whom.

Himself a parent of a 13-year-old boy, Carter added, “I tell him all the time you’ve got to have that will power” to resist temptation.

Return To News Stories