Club Drugs Concern at Shore

Liquid in water bottles that's a little gray and fizzy when shaken can be one sign of drug use among teenagers. Officials at the Jersey shore are worried about the growing use of so-called "club drugs" like ecstasy. They say kids as young as thirteen years old are using the drugs, and its fast becoming an epidemic.

It's summer at the shore. MTV is taping shows on the beach in Seaside Heights and thousands of young adults are ready to party. But in an effort to educate kids and their parents, a new push is underway to get the message out that well-known party drugs like ecstasy, GHB and Ketamine ("Special K") are no longer found just in clubs.

Joan Krier/NJ PREVENTION NETWORK: "They're out of the clubs now, they're in the high schools, they're in the middle schools, they're in community parties where kids get together and parents don't even know they're there." Police say that two million ecstasy pills are smuggled in to New Jersey every week.

Terry Farley/1ST. ASST. PROSECUTOR: "The DEA renamed this area the 'New York-Jersey Shore Corridor' because 750,000 of those pills come here every single week."

Elena Palato/ROCHESTER, NY: "Everybody does it, seriously a lot more people do it. And it's not just – usually it was just like raves and stuff but it's gone to clubs and parties everywhere."

Short-term memory loss is just one of the effects.

Dr. Larry DesRochers/E.R. PHYSICIAN: "You don't know. Ten years from now, are these kids going to have continued memory problems and not even going to be able to function well in society?" Law enforcement officials say the real key to keeping kids away from these party drugs is for parents to be aware.

Mary Holland/TOMS RIVER, NJ: "We had no idea our son was using drugs. He was sleeping all the time and we just assumed it was adolescent behavior." That's why Holland is urging other parents to get educated to some of the signs and symptoms of drug use: unusual sized or shaped pills in your child's possession, liquid in water bottles that's just a little gray and fizzy when shaken, and pacifiers, which are used to relieve teeth-grinding from muscle spasms.

Anti-drug groups say if everyone's better informed about the proliferation of party drugs, fewer of our kids will have to "face the music" of addiction or trouble with the law later on.

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Author: 6 ABC-AP