More than 150 students, faculty and alumni from the College of Pharmacy will be dispensing medicine during a bio-terrorism drill starting today in Tucson, said David Von Behren, the college's spokesman.

The drill, part of a three-day bio-terrorism conference that has garnered national attention in wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war on terror, is being held to test how a major metropolitan area anywhere in the country could respond to a biological terrorist attack. It will also help to prepare southern Arizona in case such an attack happened here, said Bryn Bailer, communications coordinator from the Pima County Health Department.

There will be a series of speeches today from national figures like Surgeon General Richard Carmona, formerly a University Medical Center surgeon. Conference members, including roughly 500 representatives from public safety and government agencies across the world, will be given updates on a hypothetical terrorist attack in Tucson and must act as though the simulation is real.

Tomorrow, a package of medicine from the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile will arrive in Tucson. The National Pharmaceutical Stockpile is a huge cache of medicines and vaccines stored in 10 different secret locations across the country and can be delivered to any location in the country within 12 hours.

A full package of medicine from one of these caches weighs about 50 tons, but the drill will only simulate the use of a small fraction of one cache, Bailer said.

On Friday, volunteer victims will arrive at the clinic and receive scenario cards describing their symptoms. They will be of different ages and different emotional states, Bailer said.

Members of the College of Pharmacy will be coordinating and helping to dispense placebo medicine to "victims" as they arrive at the Tucson Convention Center's south exhibition hall, or clinic, Von Behren said.

"Our goal is to dispense medication to 1,000 different people with all different kinds of symptoms and scenarios of trauma," Von Behren said.

The pharmacists must work quickly and accurately.

"We won't just be throwing pills at people," Bailer said. "It will be a test to organize large bodies of people and dispense pills in an orderly fashion."

Randy Ogden, a battalion chief and spokesman for the Tucson Fire Department called the drill a culmination of an idea that began two years ago.

It was then that a battalion chief named Les Caid and Carmona, who was then the director of the Southern Arizona Emergency Medical Services Council, expressed the need to prepare for a domestic terrorist attack.

Bailer said that before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, people would roll their eyes when Carmona expressed his concern.

But Carmona, Caid and all of the local organizations had already been planning to respond to any potential biological attack.

"We were ahead of the ball," Bailer said. "That is why the whole world is looking to little old Tucson this week."

Other participants from the UA community include student volunteers, Campus Health Services ÷ who will be in charge of addressing victim's mental health needs ÷ and staff from UMC, Bailer said.

Bailer described the drill as "a huge wedding," bringing people from many different professional fields together to prepare for an attack.

The Tucson police and fire departments, Pima County Sheriff's Office, the Pima County Health Department, Pima Community College, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Arizona Air National Guard will be part of the simulation.

"This drill is important because it is bringing everybody together," said Bailer. "It provides us with valuable face time, an opportunity for people to get to know each other and know how to work best together. This kind of experience would be invaluable in the event that an actual emergency occurred."

Anyone interested in playing the role of a victim for the event should contact the Volunteer Center of Tucson at 881-3300, ext. 128.