Jason Surks, 19

Jason was the kind of person people were drawn to. He made friends easily and had a great sense of humor. He was a caring person and a loving son who respected his family.

Jason was finishing the first semester of his second year as a pre–pharmacy major at Rutgers University. Since his dorm was only 45 minutes away, he came home frequently on weekends, often to work at the pharmacy where he had a job since high school.

The morning of December 17, Jason was rushed to the emergency room, but it was too late. He had been abusing prescription drugs and had overdosed.

His abuse of prescription drugs may have started after he began college, and apparently escalated the summer before he died. During his first year of college, he was taking his friend’s generic form of Ritalin to see if they would help him with his problem focusing in school.

He researched the safety of certain drugs online and how they react with others. He had visited several online pharmacies and ordered drugs from one Mexican pharmacy online that automatically renewed his order each month. As a pre-pharmacy major, he probably felt he knew more about these substances than he actually did. He evidentally thought he was being safe, but unfortunately, he was not.