Apparent Overdose Death Evidence of Growing Threat

The death of an 18-year-old Ojai Valley artist last weekend of an apparent drug overdose spotlights a growing problem not only in that bucolic enclave, but in Ventura County overall, authorities said Wednesday.

The death of Tamima Al-Awar, daughter of an Ojai art gallery and movie theater owner, is only the most recent tragedy resulting from a continuing increase in teenagers’ use of dangerous drugs such as heroin, LSD, cocaine and methamphetamine, Ojai Police Chief Gary Pentis said.

“This year alone we’ve had six narcotics overdoses in the valley, and one narcotic death,” said Pentis, not including the Al-Awar fatality. “And there’s been a cycle back to opiates as a drug of choice among youth.”

Al-Awar, who graduated from exclusive Thacher School in June, was reported dead about 1:30 Saturday afternoon after she was found at her home in the east Ojai Valley.

Police said evidence at the scene indicates she died from an overdose of an opiate-based drug, possibly heroin or the prescription drug OxyContin.

Police are looking for the source of the drug she apparently used. No arrests have been made.

The teenager’s official cause of death has not been determined, pending lab tests, said Craig Stevens, senior deputy medical examiner. What drugs, if any, were in her system won’t be known for up to 16 weeks, he said.

In the last five years, at least eight Ventura County teenagers have died of drug-related causes, including two of heroin overdoses, said Medical Examiner Ronald L. O’Halloran.

The woman’s parents, Khaled and Sheryl Al-Awar, could not be reached for comment. But friend John Grant, at the family’s Primavera Gallery on Ojai’s main street, said the parents do not believe the woman died of a drug overdose.

“She was an angel on Earth,” said another friend at the shop.

In an obituary that ran in newspapers Wednesday, the teenager was described as an aspiring artist who hoped to study at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco.

An Ojai native, Al-Awar was living at home while working at the gallery and theater and enrolled in a painting course at Santa Barbara City College, the obituary said. She painted at her home studio.

“She touched many lives and she will be dearly missed,” it said.

Thacher School officials would not comment except to describe Al-Awar as a painter.

Pentis said the death only underlines a message he has been trying to spread to Ojai Valley parents -- that drug use is spiking sharply.

Drug arrests in the Ojai Valley rose from 178 three years ago to 396 in 2001, and the count is expected to be even higher this year, he said.

Countywide, in the five cities served by the Sheriff’s Department and the unincorporated area, drug-related arrests soared from 1,332 in the first six months of 2001 to 1,859 for the same period this year.

Pentis said he could not say what portion of those arrests involved teenagers, but he said most of the increase has been in the 18 to 25 age group.

“We’ve been in this trend where youths have been offending prescription drugs, including some of these designer drugs, at the party scene,” he said. “Methamphetamine is the biggest problem up here.”

He said that the Ojai police station has the highest arrest rate for drug use of all the sheriff’s stations in the county, including those in Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Moorpark and Fillmore.

“In raw numbers, we have led all of those cities,” he said. Thousand Oaks, by comparison, has three times the population of the communities served by the Ojai station.

Susana Arce, assistant principal at Ojai’s Nordhoff High School, said teen drug use touches all parts of the community.

“It goes across socioeconomic levels,” she said. “We’re not talking about any particular type of student. It’s just cutting a huge swath across the population. It’s a shock to many parents -- they’re in denial.”

Undersheriff Craig Husband, formerly the head of the county’s narcotics unit, said anecdotal evidence also indicates a spike in drug use by juveniles.

“I speak with increasing numbers of parents whose children are becoming addicted to serious drugs,” Husband said. “Young people who I know have overdosed on drugs and died within the past year.

“Drugs have always been a very dangerous proposition,” he said. “But years ago, it was rare that someone who experimented with drugs was likely to overdose the first or second time. The possibility of that is much greater today, because of the potency of drugs.”

One increasingly popular and potent drug when altered is OxyContin, a prescription painkiller that produces a powerful, heroin-quality high.

The synthetic opiate comes in pill form, which gradually releases the drug over a 12-hour period to reduce the risk of a sudden, intense effect and the opportunity for addiction.

But users may cancel that out by crushing the pill, then snorting or injecting it.

From 2000 to 2001, nonmedical use of OxyContin more than doubled in the U.S., from 399,000 users in 2000 to 957,000 in 2001, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported in September.

Heroin, rarely used by young people locally a decade ago, appears to be making a strong comeback, said Cary Quashen, president of Action, a group that contracts with Ventura County to treat drug-addicted teens.

“Heroin has really been knocking at our doors,” Quashen said. “It means that kids are playing with higher-caliber drugs, and we need to be more aware.”

Part of the reason for the surge is that the drug has become less scary for suburban teenagers, Quashen said. Most of them now are smoking heroin rather than using needles to inject it.

“What they need to understand is that it’s just as addictive and dangerous, whether you smoke it or shoot it,” he said.

Still, Quashen and others said, the vast majority of young people abusing drugs in Ventura County are using alcohol, marijuana, prescription drugs and methamphetamine.

About 1,500 teenagers were served last year through either Action or the Palmer Drug Abuse Program in Camarillo.

While most drug treatment professionals think the problem is getting worse, no one can say for sure how many local teens are using drugs or alcohol.

But county officials estimated two years ago that 10% -- or 10,000 -- local teens used drugs or alcohol regularly.

Luis Tovar, who oversees the county’s alcohol and drug treatment programs, said he isn’t sure what the true figure is.

“We recognize we need to know this, and we’re working on it,” he said. “But right now we have no idea.”

One thing is clear: The county suffers from a crippling lack of resources to treat teenagers who need help.

That is particularly true in tiny Ojai -- one of the only cities in the county without a publicly funded drug treatment program for teenagers.

Ginny Connell, executive director of the Palmer program, said she recently lost funding for weekly group meetings in Ojai and Oak View. She applied for a $20,000 grant to revive them.

“When we were up there we certainly saw a need to be there,” Connell said. “It’s unconscionable for us to not have at least a small presence in that community.”

Resources are short in other areas, as well. Tovar estimates he needs at least $1 million for an effective drug program for adolescents, but works with a budget of about $400,000.

Most glaring is the county’s shortage of beds for residential drug treatment -- necessary for teenagers who have full-blown addictions to drugs and alcohol.

Action recently reopened a Santa Paula center that offers six spots for youths. There is little else available.

Al-Awar’s death is a reminder of that disparity, Connell said.

“It’s easy to pretend there isn’t really a problem, until something like this happens,” she said. “We have to be honest with ourselves that there is a serious problem, and we are not doing enough about it.”

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Davis is a Times correspondent and Ragland is a Times staff writer.