In May, it happened right here in the Santa Clarita Valley. A young 20-year-old was found dead, a needle sticking out of the kid’s arm.

A heroin overdose was the cause of death.

It is not a surprise that kids are using drugs in the Santa Clarita Valley, but it’s a reality overlooked by many because this area is considered to be so safe and, in many ways, sheltered.

Numbers show that’s just not the case.

In 2009, 422 adults were arrested in narcotic-related crimes in the Santa Clarita Valley. Another 122 juveniles were arrested in narcotic-related crimes. A total of 726 narcotic-related incidents were reported.

In terms of total arrests, 8.6 percent of the 4,666 made by Santa Clarita sheriff’s deputies were in narcotic-related incidents. The only two categories with more arrests were those made in the warrants and misdemeanor/miscellaneous category.

If that doesn’t tell you drugs are a problem in the Santa Clarita Valley, maybe these numbers will.

The number of patients admitted to the emergency room at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital due to overdose from January through April of this year was 73. Seven of the 73 were kids between the ages of 0 and 14. Twenty-three were between the ages of 15 and 26.

In April alone, nine people between the ages of 15 and 26 were taken to the emergency room. Four months into 2010, Henry Mayo Hospital is on pace to see about the same annual number of patients below the age of 26 in the ER because of overdosing. In 2009, 63 people between the ages of 15 and 26 were seen in the ER and 11 people 14 and under were also treated.

“I’ve detoxed in my treatment center, medically had to get kids off drugs, more in the last two years than the last 25,” says Cary Quashen, a certified addiction specialist and founder and developer of ACTION Family Counseling Program.

Quashen details another scary story. A couple of years ago, he found a place on the Internet to get Vicodin without a prescription. All he did was fax the company an old blood test. The next day he was sent 90 pills.

It was that easy and he says it is equally as easy for people to score other drugs in the Santa Clarita Valley.

He adds that law enforcement can keep putting dealers away, but the problem won’t stop. Education will have to be the bigger weapon in the war against drugs. He suggests that it be done as early as kindergarten and continue through high school.

Quashen says ACTION is the only organization of its kind in the Santa Clarita Valley, and it offers people of all types — adolescents and adults — intensive therapy, a 12-step program, anger management and other kinds of treatment. There are different costs, but he says there is also help for people who don’t have any money.

The same can be said about the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence of the San Fernando Valley, which has an office on Soledad Canyon Road.

Lynn Haynes, who is a prevention and recovery specialist for NCADD of the San Fernando Valley, says her organization is now aiming at fifth- and sixth-graders and is developing a presentation to be given in local schools. She adds that the organization is seeing more and more high school and college-age kids.

As for the people who are in the NCADD’s recovery program, Haynes says group therapy is a key element in the process.

“It’s the most effective in the early stage of recovery,” she says about group therapy. “Addicts and alcoholics are so manipulative that one-on-one doesn’t work. Group therapy does because peer pressure and peer support work the best in early stages of what we call the recovery process.”

Both Quashen and Haynes say alcohol is a drug. Kids are drinking at an early age and smoking cigarettes, then moving up, they say.

The drugs are getting more dangerous and more potent, as well.

Both Haynes and Quashen mention the same drug that’s growing in popularity locally with kids — Mexican black tar heroin. Southern California has become a major distribution center for the drug, and it has made its way into the Santa Clarita Valley.

“The reason it has such popularity is, one, it’s a lot less expensive than going after prescription pills, and you don’t have to stick a needle in your arm. You can smoke it. It hits you harder and faster, and it can kill you,” Quashen says.

A funeral for a 20-year-old who died of a heroin overdose is a scary and very real thought. Another scary thought is just how many kids, teenagers and young adults can say they’ve seen drugs in person in the Santa Clarita Valley.

For years the Santa Clarita Valley enjoyed the reputation of having a small-town feel, the kind of feel where “that kind of stuff doesn’t

happen here.”

Really?

The 20-year-old who died in May was not an isolated incident. Now more and more people, especially young people, are seeing others just like themselves, in the prime of their lives, having their lives affected, or dying, because of drugs.

Quashen notes that adolescents and college-aged students are no longer being influenced by family like they used to be. Friends now have the greatest influence. A friend, now more than ever, has so much power and must have the courage to speak up about drugs.

It could be a matter of life or death.

Cary Osborne is the assistant managing editor at The Signal