DRUG SCOURGE RETURNS; PREVENTIVE STEPS NEEDED

Two years after The New Mexican and the Rio Grande Sun laid bare the
hard-drug threat to the Espanola Valley, and a year and a half after
a heavily ballyhooed law-enforcement raid on Chimayo put some of the
most vicious dealers behind bars, the scourge has returned.

During the past several weeks, nine Rio Arriba residents have died of
what police figure are heroin overdoses.

Same sad story: Police shut down a bunch of traffickers. In the
better cases, some customers are shuffled off to treatment centers
where they might shake their habits - assuming they're not then in
the clutches of methadone. Under worse scenarios, they're left to
find new supplies - and to continue stealing from neighbors, friends
and family to buy their drugs.

Dopers don't have to look far for a new dealer: As long as the
stuff's illegal, it commands a high price; and the wealth to be made
marketing heroin, cocaine and synthetic drugs is worth the
low-to-moderate risk of arrest, conviction and time behind bars.

Drug merchants are low-lifes, trading in human misery. When new ones
rush in to fill the vacuum created by the occasional jailing of some
dealers, they're especially venomous. They've heard that they can
boost business with strong doses, and they're too dumb to know the
difference between a return-business quantity and a package that'll
put the client away forever.

That's where the Espanola area finds itself today: Dopers are
dropping like flies. Police once again have their work cut out for
them. Undoubtedly they'll drag in a few vermin, and the deadly cycle
will go on.

It might have been deadlier. The state Health Department earlier this
year approved the use of Narcan, an anti-overdose drug, in Rio Arriba
County. Several addicts there reportedly have picked up presciptions
of it - for their own use and to save the lives of fellow druggies.

That's a start; you can't treat dead dopers - and effective treatment
remains a Rio Arriba need these many months since the Chimayo raid.

And while a small youth center soon will open on the Arroyo Seco-La
Puebla road, and Espanola leaders advance the notion of a new park
near the Rio Grande, hundreds of teen-agers and pre-teens of the
Espanola Valley are at high risk of becoming tomorrow's junkies.

The area is ripe for federal investment in a major youth center -
staffed by some of the area's many real role models, and offering
day-in, day-out activities, classes and counseling kids can count on.
In coordination with the schools, such a center could provide the
after-hours attractions and guidance so many youngsters need.

In monetary terms alone, such a center, under the right leadership,
would pay for itself in diverted crime and punishment. As for the
social dividends, they're incalculable - and long past due.

Too many of today's neglected kids are tomorrow's overdoses. It's
time to dig through that dead end.