Damned Kids

If there’s one phrase that I think makes you feel old right after you catch yourself saying it, it’s “what’s with these kids today?” I’m often reminded after making such a statement that I am in fact, not old. But the realization that there are younger generations out there that is more unpredictable than your own is a startling one.

And as far as unpredictability goes, nothing tops the charts like the heroin epidemic that blindsided this island last year. I distinctly recall the high school lesson plan describing just how serious an addiction heroin is—on par with crack cocaine. Perhaps the students in the classes that came after mine weren’t paying as close attention on that day. But once you realize how teens and young 20-somethings really did not pay attention to those same lessons, well, that old-person phrase becomes a reflex.

Now that it is out there, most important thing is to not get complacent to just how serious a problem this is. Take a look at the kids who are strung out and it gives a much more fitting meaning to the term that we use for another problem we have with LI's youth: The Brain Drain.

It was a year ago this week that we received confirmation that Natalie Ciappa’s death was a result of a heroin overdose. We knew that once she became the posterchild for this scourge, it would finally get people's attention, but two county laws and a charity later, we didn’t anticipate just how much her story would resonate.

While the details that eventually began to unravel are disturbing, this was not my first crack at trying to sound the alarm that this was an issue. Back when in high school it was only rockstars that were dying and heroin chic was only on TV. Later, while I was a student at Nassau Community College in 2002, a student had died of a heroin overdose in the bathroom at the student lounge. Nobody heard about it for four months, and nobody ever would have if the administration had their way.

Pass around some anti-heroin literature, we at the student newspaper asked. No way—this was just an isolated incident, the school responded. All these years later, the stories keep on coming, as they will continue to. The heroin epidemic of the 60s and 70s didn’t go away overnight either. Not that I was there, but if history can teach us anything, it’s that we obviously didn’t learn anything from it.