BRITTANY PERRY
Special to The Leader
Last week, the federal government named Chautauqua County a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA, due to a rising heroin problem.
Heroin arrests in Jamestown alone have tripled over the past three years and have been linked to more deaths in the area than any other drug. According to the Jamestown Police Department, an estimated 90 percent of the city’s crime is drug-related.
It was with this evidence and support from the community that Chautauqua County Sheriff Joe Gerace decided to call upon the federal government for aid.
“We applied to become a federally designated High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. Senator [Charles] Schumer really helped get this going,” Gerace said. “We’re hoping that with this designation, we’ll see funding available and will be able to gather intelligence information to help our local efforts. We want to be proactive. We want to do everything we can to keep this problem from growing.”
The designation will mean better coordination among the local and federal drug enforcement authorities, as well as access to new resources for the county.
Gerace says that the “heroin epidemic” is significant country-wide, since heroin is much cheaper than other types of illicit drugs in the opiate and can be directly related to prescription drug abuse.
Chautauqua County has two major Interstate highways — I-86 and I-90 — that run through it, which makes it easier for the trafficking of illicit drugs from nearby cities.
Due to the close proximity, many wonder how Jamestown’s problems with drug abuse will affect Fredonia students.
In a survey conducted by The Leader using 100 students, 92 percent cited marijuana as the most common type of illicit drug that is used among Fredonia students. Of those 100 students surveyed, none selected heroin as a typical student’s drug-of-choice.
“To my knowledge, there haven’t been any heroin arrests this year,” said University Lieutenant Clifton Wheeler. “We’ve had a few in the past but none this semester. Most of the cases we have dealt with involve marijuana use.”
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), both marijuana and heroin are Schedule I drugs. Schedule I drugs, substances or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.
Other popular answers in the survey included MDMA (or Molly) and prescription medications such as Adderall.
In 2012 the Daily Beast, an online publication, ranked Fredonia as number 10 on a list of the “Top 30 Druggiest Schools in the United States.”
The list however has room for error, since the main criteria for determining the “druggiest school” was based on the drug scene grade listed on College Prowler, a website with student rated databases, the number of drugs associated arrests on campus and the statewide statistic of drug use between the ages of 18-25 from the 2008-09 U.S. Department of Human Services National Survey on Drug Abuse.
“They looked at our drug arrests and compared it to the size of the campus. It might’ve looked bad for Fredonia as a campus, but it shows that we take drug use among students seriously,” Wheeler said. “We try to make people accountable for what is going on. The arrests might be a little high for the community, but that’s because we’re proactive.”
Other SUNY schools that made the list were Purchase, Oswego and New Paltz.
While Fredonia ranked quite high on the list, it also ranked as number 52 on the Regional Universities Ranking from the U.S. News & World Report that same year.
Students, however, were not too surprised to hear about the Daily Beast’s ranking. Forty-two percent of those surveyed agreed that Fredonia has a problem with drug use, and 50 percent said it was fairly easy for students to get drugs.
Wheeler believes that the HITA initiated in Chautauqua County will be useful to officers at the University level as well.
“We get all the intel and intelligence on that, and all that stuff is presented to our officers and used as another tool to help them to deal with situations on campus,” he said.
Fredonia has alcohol and drug sanctions for students who are caught with the substances on campus. According to the University catalog, the first alcohol or drug-related violation would typically result in a Disciplinary Warning and a requirement to complete either the online Alcohol or Drug Education Course.
A second offense would typically result in Disciplinary Probation and a referral to the Fredonia Choice, Acceptance, Responsibility, Experience, Success., or C.A.R.E.S, program: an in-depth alcohol and drug prevention counseling program. The third offense would typically result in some sort of Disciplinary Suspension. The duration of the suspension would depend on the student’s educational and disciplinary record.
The sanctions can vary based on the degree of severity.
Julie Bezek, the Coordinator of Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention at Student Counseling Services said that there are a variety of other services for students who worry about a substance abuse problem.
“Fredonia has partnerships outside of campus; sometimes students have issues with substance abuse that go beyond our scope and expertise of the staff here,” Bezek said. “The WCA (Woman’s Christian Association) and the TLC [Health Network] have chemical dependency programs for inpatient and outpatient services. We periodically touch base with those programs so that they are aware of our services and that we are aware of their services.
“Resources are available for students who are struggling with substance abuse,” she said. “Students worry about coming forward since it’s contrary to the college expectation. Student Counseling Services is happy to provide help to students or help them find those services in the community that can meet their needs.”