HEROIN USE EXPANDING IN SUBURBS, STUDY SHOWS

ATLANTA -- A study suggests that heroin, a longtime scourge of Ameica's
inner cities, is becoming a suburban and rural problem.

The number of city-dwelling heroin users treated each year in New Jersey
dropped by half dur-ing the 1990s, while the number treated from suburban
and rural areas nearly tripled, the govern-ment reported Thursday.

Analysts said people in outlying areas may be less aware than city dwellers
of diseases linked to heroin use, such as AIDS mid hepatitis.

"It's less of a personal experi-ence for them," said Dr. Anna Kline, a
researcher at the New Jersey Health Department. They haven't seen their
relatives and friends dying of AIDS."

New Jersey addiction centers treated 1817 suburban and rural heroin users
in 1999, up from 691 in 1993. During the same period, the number of urban
users treat-ed annually dropped from 2,018 to 1,076.

The study suggested that a new generation of heroin users may prefer
injecting the drung to snortng it, exposing themselves to a broad mnge of
blood-borne diseases.

Nearly half of the 18- to 25- year-old heroin users treated in New Iersey
in 1999 reported in-jecting the drug, up from 22 per-cent in 1993.

The change mystifies officials. Most of the young addicts were in-jecting
high-purity heroin, Tradi-tionally, purer heroin is snorted.

Also Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that
needle-exchange programs became widely popu-lar in the late 1990s as a way
to prevent AlDS.