Nearly 100 teenagers and young adults in Brockton, MA, have died of opiate drug addictions since 2004, and everyone seems to care except city councilors, the school board and the school district superintendent - they didn’t bother to attend a historic public forum recently to help deal with the problem and address the lack of drug education and drug rehab in the city.

The event, called “Generations Rx, Children in the Medicine Cabinet", was historic because it was the first time that the Drug Enforcement Administration has organized such a forum anywhere in the US.

But in spite of the fact that OxyContin and heroin addiction have ravaged local high school students and recent graduates, with as many as 100 deaths in the past three or so years and as many as 4,500 more needing treatment for nonfatal overdoses, only two of Brockton's 11 city councilors attended, and not one of the city's seven School Committee members or school administration officials showed up.

The New England DEA agent in charge came down from Boston with a dozen agents in tow for the forum. They joined the local DA and representatives from two dozen local organizations, along with a director from the Partnership For a Drug-Free America from Maryland, a university professor from Boston, a state senator, a state representative, the state Dept. of Public Health, the Mayor’s office, local nurses, teachers, EMTs, police officers, and drug rehab specialists.

Nearly 100 local residents attended - many the parents of dead or addicted teenagers, or youngsters with addiction problems themselves - to hear presentations from government agencies, a support group, a drug rehab center and an academic research center.

The director of a state-funded 60-bed residential drug rehab program for adults said he turns away 40 requests for drug rehab every day. More drug rehab facilities are badly needed, and he has the resources to open three more drug rehab centers totaling 70 beds immediately, but they are continually rejected by those in the neighborhoods where they are proposed.

A professor of public health at Boston University's School of Public Health said the focus on academic testing in Massachusetts schools has “virtually wiped out preventative education," despite curriculum mandates to provide such education.

The forum was sponsored by the local newspaper, The Enterprise, with the Plymouth County district attorney's office, the parents' support group Learn to Cope, Brockton Area Multi Services Inc., the DEA, Massasoit Community College, Apothecare and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. It came after a series of articles last March describing the terrible opiate addiction problems at high schools and around the city. In many cases, teens and young adults told the paper they got hooked on the painkiller OxyContin, then turned to the cheaper heroin. Heroin costs as little as a pack of cigarettes on the street today.

Brockton’s school officials better wake up and smell the coffee, and get anti-drug education rolling their schools again. And local residents should take another look at allowing more drug rehab program facilities. The city’s youth is in drug trouble, and only education and more drug addiction treatment is going to turn it around.