Poway Holds Town Hall Meeting On Teen Substance Abuse

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published January 19, 2012 at 9:18 AM PST

This story was published more than 12 years ago.

The latest to die was 17-year-old Luke Lipscomb, who was found with a gunshot wound to the head after smoking hallucinogenic drugs with school friends last November.

Steve Vaus of the Poway Community Leadership Institute said Poway is a relatively affluent community with good schools, but so far, efforts to tackle the insidious problem of drug use among teens are failing.

“Here’s the disconnect,“ Vaus said. “ Because it hasn’t been widely known how prevalent the problem is in Poway, these efforts don’t seem to get much traction. But clearly we’re still losing kids and we need to do more.“

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Vaus said a DEA task force has identified Poway as one of the hotspots for oxycontin abuse.

Tonight’s meeting will include city council members, and school and law enforcement officials. Parents will be asked to air their concerns and talk about what the community needs to do to avert more tragedies.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.