Hazleton is a small quiet city tucked among the rolling green hills of northeastern Pennsylvania. Coal was once dug from those hills. Decades ago thousands of European immigrants left the major urban centers of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York City to work in the mines. Church spires and Orthodox domes define the cityscape of this town, not skyscrapers. But this benign appearance hides a darker side of Hazleton. Substance abuse -- in the form of alcohol and narcotics -- is wasting lives, mostly younger lives.

Thirty years ago, heroin was a drug of choice in major urban centers, and virtually unknown in small cities like Hazleton. Mayor Mike Marsicano, a native of the city, remembers a time when heroin wasn't available to any would-be users in his town, but now that's changed. "It's as common as marijuana," he says. "It's very easy to get today." Once a state police officer, this 51-year-old public official says the city's easy highway accessibility to New York (210 kilometers) and Philadelphia (140 kilometers) contributes to the availability of heroin and other narcotics.

Two floors below the mayor's office in the basement is the police evidence room. The items stored there -- all carefully marked and packaged for presentation in court -- prove that many vices have reached Hazleton. Heroin, marijuana, amphetamines, powder cocaine, crack cocaine, and guns almost spill off the shelves in this small room.

Hazleton Police Sergeant Ralph Lindsey leads a visitor into the evidence room. Most of the town's people will never see the proof of drug use in their community, but he says, "It's here. We can't close our eyes."

Close to 20 deaths from heroin overdose have occurred in a three-county region around Hazleton since the beginning of 1999. In this close-knit area, where families have known each other for generations, those deaths take on much larger significance than they would in an urban center where larger populations breed anonymity. Lindsey says, "People had figured that this wasn't their world. Now they see that it is their world. Maybe that growing consciousness is what we need."

Creating that consciousness is a primary goal for the Greater Hazleton Area Drug Free Task Force, formed in 1997. Hazleton City Councilman Lou Barletta, now a candidate for mayor, was among the original members. He agrees with Lindsey, another task force member, that the people of the area didn't want to believe that a big city drug problem had come to their small city. Barletta says the task force set out to change that. "The task force took this problem and put it right in the forefront, put it in their face, put it in the newspaper."

The public responded positively to an early task force project -- a drug tip telephone hotline that allows citizens to anonymously alert authorities about suspected drug activity. Police investigators receive about 12 calls a month and have made arrests based on information provided by the public through the hotline, Lindsey says.

Crossing Boundaries

Ed Pane is the founder of the Greater Hazleton Area Drug Free Task Force and the president and chief executive officer of Serento Gardens, a private non-profit organization providing alcoholism and substance abuse treatment services from an office just two blocks from city hall.

In only 18 months since the task force was founded, Pane says the group has managed to overcome one of the problems that hampered earlier efforts to address substance abuse in the area -- the political boundaries that divide the larger community of some 80,000 people into a patchwork of townships and boroughs surrounding the city of Hazleton itself. "There are no boundaries to drug dealers," Barletta says, emphasizing the pervasiveness of the problem.

The task force transcended political boundaries with successful lobbying campaigns to win anti-drug commitments from many of the area's distinct governmental bodies. A high profile lobbying effort won pledges from 16 local and regional governments to participate in the campaign promoting a "Drug Free Greater Hazleton."

Lindsey calls that "a significant step" because of the community pressure it created for public officials to devote more attention to the issue.

That success led the task force to pressure the local governments for stronger legislative action. The group won regional adoption of an ordinance that bars the sale and possession of drug paraphernalia, the devices and accessories used in drug consumption, storage, and concealment.

In passing the ordinance, these local governments have gone into uncharted territory in the efforts to control drug activity, according to Hazleton attorney John Rogers who wrote the ordinance in his capacity as a task force member. Rogers says the ordinance is more strict than a state law that regulates the same types of items, but local governments agreed to passage because "we shamed them into it."

Rogers says the ordinance makes paraphernalia possession a summary offense, the most serious form of crime that falls within the lawmaking powers of local governments. Conviction carries a maximum 90-day jail sentence and a $300 fine.

District Justice Joe Zola calls the ordinance a "basic foundation" to the anti-narcotics component of the task force's campaign of substance abuse prevention. He has convicted about 30 individuals for possession of outlawed paraphenalia since the ordinance was adopted by the city of Hazleton less than a year ago.

The greatest victory achieved with this ordinance, according to task force members, is a citation against a local shop that stocked drug paraphernalia. The store owner responded to the charge by taking the items off his shelves.

Fighting it Everyday

Heroin and narcotic use may be the most deadly and sinister form of substance abuse plaguing Hazleton, but many believe that alcohol abuse among teenagers is a greater problem.

The discovery of her 17-year-old son's alcoholism is what committed Sharon Rish to working with the Hazleton task force. Active in the public education campaign, she says, "Nowadays, any 13-year-old knows exactly where to go and who to contact to get beer. It is too easy, and because of that we are seeing 15 and 16-year-olds totally, physically dependent on alcohol."

As the season for high school dances and graduation parties approached in the spring of the year, task force members recruited many of the area's beer distributors to help in the campaign against teenage drinking. Sixty percent of the major beer retailers in the area joined the task force in conveying a tough message to their customers about teenage drinking.

"Attention Parents of Graduates" says a printed flier lying next to the cash register in the Keystone Case and Keg, a beer store. The task force printed these fliers for beer store customers, warning that providing alcohol to minors under Pennsylvania state law is a crime that can bring a sentence of up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

Keystone owner Amy Urban says, "We have more people than I expected taking that (the flier). They aren't aware it's a $10,000 fine. That's a lot of money."

Rish says, "We just wanted to let people see that it (the law) is pretty strict." The mother whose son was in an alcohol treatment center at age 17 adds, "It puts a bit of fear in people."

The commitment and earnestness of task force members is evident. But whether their efforts have actually reduced substance abuse among the people of Hazleton is difficult to measure. A representative from the national organization Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America says, "their accomplishments are outstanding," but task force chairman Paul Brenner will not declare victory. "Yes, we're making a difference," he says, "but are we winning the battle? Hell, no."

Many of the task force members know the ravages of substance abuse too well to expect their efforts to bring a dramatic change to their community in only 18 months. Frank Katona comes to his task force work with memories of a cousin and a nephew who died from heroin overdoses. He has two sons who are addicted to drugs. "It's heartbreaking. The reasons I'm doing it is because it hurts me. It's in my family, and I'm out their fighting it everyday."