Mahopac Resident Joins US Attorney at Drug Forum
Sitting side by side during a forum in White Plains last week were Drug Crisis in Our Backyard co-founder and Mahopac resident Steve Salomone and United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara.
Salomone, the co-executive director of the organization, said in an interview, while he never expected to one day sit next to a law enforcement official of Bharara’s stature, he’s glad the push to raise awareness and solutions to combat the drug scourge in the area has gotten the attention of the federal government.
“We’ve been working on a local level for a long time and to have the support of the US attorney has been terrific,” Salomone said. “It’s been helpful.”
Salomone and Bharara were joined by a drug addiction doctor and drug enforcement agent at Pace Law School in White Plains Thursday to discuss how serious the drug problem is in the area and what can be done to stop it. Each speaker offered a different perspective, with Salomone providing the most emotional and personal one.
Drug Crisis in Our Backyard was founded by 2012 by the Salomones of Mahopac and the Christiansens of Somers after both families lost a son to a drug overdose. The organization has an office in Carmel.
Bharara said during his remarks that people across the country are dying from opioid abuse every day and each one of those deaths have devastated a family and a community “and it’s only getting worse.” Since 1999, opioid deaths have nearly quadrupled, according to the Center for Disease Control and overdoses are now the top cause of accidental deaths in America, Bharara noted.
Bharara said his office has the drug problem at the top of its agenda and the office is doing everything it can to shut down every unlawful distribution of prescription pills and hard drugs. That includes prosecuting doctors, pharmacists and dealers, Bharara said.
The federal office is also beginning to coordinate with local police departments every time there is an overdose death in that certain community, in hopes of discovering the dealer that led to that fatality. Every overdose death should be treated as a potential crime scene, he added.
“If you are a coldhearted dealer, not an addict, but a dealer who peddles poison to people after learning about overdoses from your drugs,” Bharara said. “We’re going to come after you, hard.”
During Salomone’s remarks, he talked about his late son Justin and his struggle with drugs that led to his death in 2012. Salomone reminded people that even though Justin was a drug addict, he had many other positive qualities. Salomone also said his family was a standard American family that did all the right things, but noted Justin was always a little different. While a loving kid, he had issues adapting to social situations from a young age and handling pressure situations.
When Salomone first discovered Justin at 16 was using marijuana, Salomone admits he and his wife should have come down harder on him. From there, Justin continued to escalate his drug use with harder drugs, including cocaine, Percocet and OxyContin. Once he reached Marist College, it got worse and later onto his work career, Salomone said Justin continued to suffer from addiction. Salomone said he tried to mentor him, even hiring him into the company he was working for because Salomone thought Justin needed to be on a “straight arrow path.”
He realizes now that he and his wife didn’t approach it the right way.
“I wish I realize now that my son was ill and that I could have helped him,” Salomone said.
Even when Justin entered programs to rehabilitate himself, he would later turn back to drugs, even though Salomone and his wife could see his son didn’t want to be a drug addict anymore.
Once Justin got a promotion at a new job, he couldn’t handle it and overdosed at home, Salomone said. The overdose left him debilitated, and he had to go through physical rehab. Once he moved into another home with 12-hour supervision, he died of his second overdose weeks later, Salomone said. Justin was 29.
Salomone hopes that his story helps others realize certain patterns and information about dealing with a loved one who is a drug addict. He stressed families than originally thought and a stigma shouldn’t be attached to it.
“Most people will admit that there is a problem in their community,” he said. “Most parents will not admit that this problem may be in their own home.”
Other speakers were Dr. Abigail Herron, a psychiatrist that specializes in helping drug addicts and James Hunt, the special agent in charge of the New York field division for the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Herron said drug addicts are able to change behavior with the right help. She stressed drug addiction is a disease.
“Recovery means living a productive life,” she said. “And not using illicit opioids with or without ongoing medication.”
Serving for more than 35 years, Hunt said there has never been a heroin epidemic like there is presently. While the 1960s and 1970s was a bad time for illicit drug sales, “it pales in comparison to now.”
And locking up “evil people,” as he describes the dealers, is only part of the solution.
“Education for children, I know at a young age people say you don’t scare kids about stuff like (drug use),” Hunt said. “Bulls—, scare them. They should be scared about this.”
