"Drugs: It's everyone's problem" will be the topic of a forum March 2 at St. John's University, Grymes Hill.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- "Drugs: It's everyone's problem" will be the topic of a community-based forum March 2 at St. John's University's Grymes Hill campus.
The forum, which is free and open to the community, begins at 7 p.m. in the Kelleher Center.
Sponsored by 31 I.D.E.A.L. (Information Dealing with Education and Learning), a group of retired and active educators and administrators from Staten Island schools, the session will focus on what borough schools, educators, families and the community are doing to educate young people about substance abuse, and what more needs to be done.
The evening will feature a panel of experts on substance abuse, including Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon and Luke Nasta, director of Camelot Counseling and Treatment Center. The panel also will feature 122nd Precinct Police Officer Louise Sanfilippo and fifth-grade teacher Michelle Romano from the "Too Good For Drugs" program at PS 23, Richmond; Melissa (Missy) Forsyth, a parent advocate from the YMCA Counseling Service, and Thomas Checchi, the Advance's managing producer of public interest and advocacy, who has coordinated the newspaper's award-winning coverage of the drug crisis.
NY1 Staten Island anchor Anthony Pascale will serve as moderator.
McMahon is expected to speak about the Heroin Overdose Prevention & Education (H.O.P.E.) program, a new initiative designed to combat the borough's heroin and opioid scourge by diverting first-time or low-level drug offenders into treatment instead of into court and jail.
According to McMahon, there have been at least 100 suspected drug overdose deaths in the borough since he took office on Jan. 1 of last year. In that same period, there have been 80 overdose-reversals by NYPD officers using the drug Naloxone, he said.
Those figures only account for victims found by police, so officials suspect the actual numbers could be as much as 30 percent higher.
In the first 31 days of 2017 alone, there have been seven overdose deaths and a total of 18 suspected overdoses on Staten Island, according to McMahon's office.
The NYPD recently announced the expansion of its "Too Good for Drugs" program in the schools.
Last year, Borough President James Oddo launched the pilot program, which served fifth-graders.
The program either pairs classroom teachers with police officers during the school day or pairs after-school leaders with officers to teach students "an evidence-based program that has proven to work," Oddo said.
The program is now in all Staten Island public and private schools.