Bucks County parents search for clues to drug use in mock teen bedroom at drug forum

Braving a bitter wind on a dark February night, several dozen Bucks County parents lined up to get a look at what appeared to be a normal teenager’s bedroom — black twin bed, posters on the wall, cluttered dresser top and nightstand.

But everything changed abruptly when Bensalem Police Sgt. Adam Schwartz reached into a hidden slit in the mattress and pulled up what he described as a bag of heroin, showing it to the gaggle of alarmed grown-ups crowded around inside.

Soon, Schwartz and Officer Michael Jachimski had revealed the seemingly mundane bedroom as a drug den of horrors, with pills hidden inside the top of a hairbrush or a slit in a tennis ball, and Suboxone — a maintenance drug used to treat opioid addiction — hidden in a cigarette pack.

Under Schwartz’s guidance, a bottle opener on a key ring became a sign of excessive drinking, while everyday objects such as small rubber bands underneath a mattress were a clue that a teenager might be abusing heroin.

“These are very, very easy to get,” said Schwartz, holding up the small dissolving Suboxone strips, which can also trigger a high. “People abuse these as much as anything else.”

The visit from the large trailer hauling the mock bedroom created by Bensalem police — displaying about 100 hidden or hard-to-spot signs of drug and alcohol abuse, mental-health problems, unhealthy relationships, or potential school violence at a cost of roughly $23,000 paid for by private donations — was the highlight of a community awareness forum Monday night at Central Bucks South High School in Warrington.

Inside the school, parents were able to attend workshops on vaping or administering Narcan, or naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug, and could receive a free box of the nasal spray. During the session, they received detailed instructions on when and how to use it, another sign of how seriously officials in Bucks County are treating an addiction crisis that shows little sign of letting up. Despite increased prevention efforts, overdose deaths in the county nearly doubled from 2015 to 2017, reaching 231 fatalities.

“We felt we had an obligation to reach out and help our kids live their best lives possible,” said Abe Lucabaugh, assistant superintendent of Central Bucks, the third-largest school district in the state. He said the program — which included talks by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro and other officials — was put together after school officials looked at Pennsylvania Youth Survey results showing troubling trends, including a rise in vaping.

Many adults who toured the mock teen bedroom were grateful for the tips. “We have to be snoopies,” said Sheryl Benningfield of Buckingham, who said her 13-year-old granddaughter has been staying with her and vaping and occasionally taking pills. “I have to be more suspicious and look closer at things.”

That was certainly the idea for Bensalem officers who last spring, after a spike in overdoses, decided to work with school officials on creating their one-of-a-kind mock bedroom with all its hidden red flags, before raising the money to put the exhibit inside a trailer and take it on the road.

“Everybody loves it,” said Fred Harran, Bensalem’s director of public safety, who said he’s now getting swamped with requests for the trailer — inside which parents sometimes search for clues like containers with false bottoms or tissues stained by coughed-up blood.

On Monday, Schwartz showed the parents how bags of pot can be hidden inside a clock or a baseball hat hanging on the wall, even as his audience peppered him with questions about how much drugs cost or how users go from downing pills to snorting and then injecting heroin.

“If you see wet wipes in your son’s room, you definitely know something’s up,” said Schwartz, showing how drugs are stuffed under the wipes.

“It’s all around them — it’s everywhere constantly,” said Renee Schaub of Warrington, who has three kids, one each in high school, middle school, and grade school. “I go through all their stuff, phones, bedroom, everything. That’s my job.”

Harran said the seriousness of the drug crisis should force any responsible parent to investigate what’s happening with his or her child, and not to think of that as spying. “A child has no Fourth Amendment protection from his parents,” he said.

Back inside the school, about 30 people listened to David Fialko, a certified prevention specialist with the Council of Southeast Pennsylvania, a nonprofit addiction treatment agency, as he showed them how to administer Narcan and stressed getting an overdose victim to an emergency room before the drug wore off, in about 90 minutes.

Many of those receiving the free anti-overdose drug and instructions had already dealt with the advanced stages of drug abuse.

Wendy Kazickas of Riegelsville, a teacher in Central Bucks, said her son has been addicted to heroin for nine years and is slated to be released from prison this summer after a three-year sentence.

“I’ve been dealing with this for a while,” Kazickas said. “I’m hoping that [prison] made an impact on him — he has a lifelong addiction.” She looked at the box of Narcan. “I’ll keep this.”