By Patrick McGroarty
Reporter Staff

A community meeting organized by city officials and the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) at the Murphy Community Center last Thursday evening brought calls for concerned parents and organizations in Neponset to apply for a BPHC grant to fund a committee that would address mounting concerns about substance abuse among teens in the neighborhood.

Jan Queram of the Boston Public Health Commission, who moderated the forum, told an audience of over 100 parents, teenagers, police officers, and health service workers, that the meeting was meant to address a city-wide heroin and OxyContin problem of increasing concern in Neponset and Adams Village.

"This is an educational forum. It's not going to discuss any specific instances or incidents that have happened in the recent past," said Queram.

But after the conclusion of the panel presentation, Liam O'Connor, a 20 year-old Cambridge resident and UMass-Boston student who grew up in Neponset, read for the audience an essay describing the substance abuse history and recent overdose of his childhood friend, Patrick Joseph Flavin. O'Connor, who was with Flavin hours before his death, said that his friend struggled with heroin and OxyContin addiction for years before three days spent searching frantically for an open bed in a de-tox center ended in his death from an overdose on June 9.

As O'Connor read to a tearful audience that included Flavin's mother, he also mentioned a second incident in recent weeks in which a young man reportedly died after slipping into a coma induced by a heroin overdose.

Law enforcement officers and public health officials identified Neponset as a neighborhood of increasing concern, but data presented by Querem revealed that statistically, Dorchester is not at the top of city neighborhoods most effected by heroin and OxyContin overdoses. According to statistics she attributed to Emergency Medical Services, 8,389 people were admitted for heroin treatment in Boston in 2004, with the most overdoses occurring in Charlestown, South Boston, and the South End. "South Dorchester," as the EMS figures denote a portion of the neighborhood that would include Neponset, recorded an average of 5.7 heroin overdose encounters for every 10,000 residents in fiscal 2005; the South End had the highest encounter rate in the same period, with 41.5 encounters. South Boston, where Jack Leary, a state probation officer, said the city confronted a similar problem several years ago, had 27.4 overdose encounters in the same period.

Speaking during a question and answer segment of the forum, Leary urged parents to pursue city and state resources such as the possibility of a BPHC grant, and said that parental responsibility would be a key to stemming substance abuse among teenagers.

"Don't quit if you're a parent. There's nothing worse than giving someone a safe place to use," said Leary. "What the dealers don't want is to see a union from the police, young people, and their parents. If you see something, pick up the phone and call the police."

For speakers at the meeting, accountability was the watchword, particularly for the users themselves.

"Addiction is supposed to be a disease; I've never seen a bag of coke, a needle chase a person down the street and make people use it," said Adam Butler, Boston Public Health Commission Program Manager. "I believe drugs is only 3 percent of the problem. 97 percent is the person trying to self-medicate because there's something going on inside of them. When it puts us close to home, it puts a real picture on what we're dealing with. Drugs is only a piece of it."

Kathy Costello and Kim MacDonald, who are both Neponset mothers raising several teenagers, told the Reporter that they thought the forum was a valuable first step in confronting an issue that cannot be ignored.

"Probably we're just opening our eyes, but it seems to be starting younger and younger. What we really need is something for kids to do on Friday and Saturday nights. We need something for them to do so they're not getting chased home from the park on the weekends. We need a safe place with no drugs," said Costello

"They're telling us to start a coalition. I've seen the grants. I wish somebody would help us. We would like to start something in the neighborhood. These are good kids, like the kids in all neighborhoods. Maybe we mothers can get together and make something happen," said MacDonald.