Funeral home gives away free take-home drug tests

Seeking to help fight the onslaught of heroin on Long Island, a Suffolk funeral home owner is giving away take-home drug tests to parents worried their children are using drugs.

Peter Moloney, who with his two brothers owns and operates the Moloney Family Funeral Home chain, said Thursday he has distributed about 25 take-home drug tests to parents and has more to give away.

"This is such an important thing in our communities," Moloney said. "If we can save just one life, then to us it's worth it," he said, explaining he'd seen too many young lives wrecked by drugs. "There's no strings attached, no questions asked."

Joining Moloney at a Hauppauge news conference, Jeffrey Reynolds, the executive director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, said the recent uptick in heroin use is "like nothing we have ever seen before. This is indeed a major crisis."

Reynolds said widespread use of drug tests will give parents cover to have difficult conversations with their children and fortify children against peer pressure to use heroin.

"For kids who don't have the skills necessary to negotiate peer pressure, this gives them a reason to say, 'Hey, my parents test me,' " Reynolds said.

Jeff Frayler, the president of the Suffolk Police Benevolent Association, said parents must be attentive to their children's activities and friends to monitor possible drug use.

"It's a problem we're not going to be able to arrest our way out of," Frayler said. "Your kid may be the most wonderful kid in the world, but that doesn't mean he's not involved with drugs."

Moloney said any parent interested in a free drug test can simply walk into one of his funeral homes and ask for one.