Pubdate: Mon, 11 Feb 2002
Source: Gadsden Times, The (AL)
Copyright: 2002 The Gadsden Times
Contact:  http://www.gadsdentimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1203
Author: Lisa Rogers, Times Staff Writer

OPERATION SAVE TEENS MAKES ITS 40TH SCHOOL VISIT

Stories of drug abuse and pictures of dead children got the reaction Mike 
Reece hoped it would. Many students and teachers wept as they listened to 
Carol Hudson tell of her son's battle with drug abuse and then his death on 
Christmas more than a year ago. Reece, an agent with the state Alcoholic 
Beverage Control Board, and Hudson last week conducted the Operation Save 
Teens program at Gaston High School - the 40th school where the drug abuse 
program has been presented. Hudson has volunteered in the last year to be 
part of Operation Save Teens and accompanies Reece to programs at schools, 
churches, civic groups or "anywhere we're invited," Reece said. Reece said 
he and Kenneth and Carol Hudson had the same philosophy as the priest who 
died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 after he went into the building 
he knew was about to collapse to minister to firefighters and others. In an 
interview later aired of the priest before he went into the building, he 
responded when asked what he planned to do. "He stopped and said, 'I'm not 
sure what we're going to do, but we're going to do something,"' Reece said. 
Reece said he and the Hudsons set out not knowing what they would do, but 
they had to do something. Reece said too many children have died from drug 
overdoses and warned the students that some of the photos would be graphic. 
"You have to know what happens to young people when they take these drugs," 
he said. He told of several deaths that are linked to OxyContin and other 
overdoses, in which teens have taken the drug not realizing its dangers. 
Reece told of a youth who died from sniffing Pam cooking spray and another 
who died from huffing gas. Ecstasy now is the No. 1 illegal drug abused by 
high school kids, he said. Once kids start abusing a drug, they become 
addicted and cannot stop, he said. "We have to reach kids before they 
start," he said.

He showed pictures of his own kids. "They're the reason I do this," he said 
of the program that has been presented around the state. "It's a labor of 
love." For Carol Hudson, the presentation also is a labor of love for her 
late son. "Not a day goes by that I don't miss that boy," she said as she 
wept. She shared details of his life as he grew up in Gadsden, then of when 
she learned about his drug use. She found marijuana in his room.

"People will tell you it's not addictive, it will not lead to stronger drug 
use," she said. "But it does." Even though she often went through her son's 
things looking for drugs, he found ways to hide the drug use from her. 
Several months before Anthony died, Hudson got a call that he was in the 
hospital from an overdose.

Doctors and nurses needed to know what drug he had taken, but Anthony's 
friends would not tell, Hudson said. He was in intensive care for a few 
days and then recovered. A few months after his death from an overdose of 
MS Contin on Christmas morning 2000, Carol Hudson said she and her husband 
looked at the records to find out what drugs were in Anthony's system when 
he overdosed several months before.

OxyContin, Xanax, Valium and marijuana were in his system. "But one pill 
killed him," Hudson said of the overdose on MS Contin. She said her son was 
considered the smart one among his friends.

He would tell them, "Don't take this with that," Hudson said. "If my son 
was so smart, why do I have to go to talk to him through six feet of dirt?" 
she said. She asked the seventh- and eighth-graders to picture one person 
they truly love. "If Anthony knew the pain his dad and I feel, he would 
never have made those choices in his life," she said. "If you don't love 
yourself enough to say no to these drugs, think of that person you love and 
how they'd feel tomorrow if you weren't here." A photo of Kenneth and Carol 
Hudson holding their only son filled a projection screen as the story of 
his life in pictures was shown.

It concluded with a Christmas picture of the three in front of the 
Christmas tree. "You saw right before your eyes, the whole life of one 
young man," Reece told the group. "You have to make the right choice."
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