I am a national drug education and motivational speaker for youth and families who has spoken at over 1700 public schools and universities nationwide. I have done hundreds of newspaper interviews and my own television program that went out via satellite to 110 countries. I know how to give you the news nuggets that make an article exciting and highly interesting to families.
I also have fantastic images that can be included, such as my diving with a 17 foot long great white shark; I was inside the world’s first plastic shark cage. The shark and I were only inches apart. See picture at www.drugsbite.com
I will be speaking at the Santa Barbara SDA Church, on June 22nd (Saturday) at 11:00 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
For over five years I lived an odyssey of adventure diving with Humpback whales, orcas, dolphins and sharks. Two years prior to my going to work for The Cousteau Society, I was in a federal prison serving the end of a five-year sentence as a codefendant in the John Z. DeLorean drug trial of 1982. In 1993, I resigned my position with Cousteau to become a full-time youth speaker.
I talk about the factors that are influencing our youth and families:
The United States houses the world’s largest inmate population per capita.
California spends more on corrections that the countries of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan combined.
In California, the fastest growing part of our inmate population per capita is teenage girls.
Suicide is the number one killer in America.
The fastest growing rate of suicide per capita is children 10 to 14 years old.
My job is to offer people hope and real solutions.
I was a Navy bomb disposal frogman, who served four tours in Vietnam. A marijuana mistake destroyed my career.
Two years later, under threat of a gun, I co-piloted a drug plane from Colombia to California with the largest known drug haul in United States history at the time, the federal prosecutor valued it at $250,000,000. I was the pilot in the famous John Z. DeLorean drug trial.
Ordered to drive a car to Los Angeles containing $24,000,000 worth of cocaine I instead abandoned it. I was arrested by a dozen DEA agents, pled guilty and two years later became an inmate fireman.
As chief engineer of an inmate fire crew, I actually got to leave a prison camp driving an emergency vehicle red light and siren. I led 17 lifesaving responses including rescuing the crew of the B-1 bomber that crashed in the Mojave Desert in 1984.
At my lectures and in my book I share about the primal intensity of prison, a concrete jungle where inmate logic rules. Yet my greatest message is about hope. I have many pictures that would significantly contribute to an article.
If I have captured your attention, please contact me.
Stephen Arrington, 5234 Country Club Dr., Paradise, CA 95969
(530) 872-4884, Web Site www.drugsbite.com., E-mail steve@drugsbite.com