BIG-CITY SCOURGE BESETS RURAL STATE

Vermont Struggles With Influx Of Heroin

RUTLAND, Vt. - A decade ago, a bag of heroin in Vermont cost upward of $50
- - if you could find it.

Today the price has plummeted to as low as $15 a one-dose bag, say
authorities, and heroin use has skyrocketed to the point where some
residents have seen used hypodermic needles on the sidewalks of more
affluent areas of the state's second-largest city.

''We've had heroin here, to my knowledge, for the last 15 years,'' said
Captain Scott Tucker of Rutland's police department. ''But 15 years ago, we
probably knew the handful of people who were involved in it.''

Not anymore, he said. Users now come as young as 15 and the city has
experienced a wave of crime - burglaries and bad checks - that police
attribute to addicts getting quick cash for a fix.

Outsiders might picture the typical Vermont drug user as an aging hippie
smoking pot at an outdoor concert in the rolling hills of a dairy farm. But
police and politicians say the state is seeing a dramatic surge in big-city
drugs traveling up Interstates 93 and 91 from the streets of Massachusetts
cities such as Springfield, Holyoke, Lawrence, and Lowell.

And as Vermont scrambles to deal with its problem, the state finds itself
understaffed and underprepared. The Vermont Drug Task Force had a staff of
21 people as recently as 1992; today it has 10. And there's not a single
methadone clinic in the state, although methadone treatment for addicts was
legalized under limited circumstances last year.

''It was only a matter of time,'' Lieutenant James Colgan, commander of the
task force, said of the drug influx. ''We can only keep the wolves from the
door for so long.''

The growing heroin problem appears to have evolved from the efforts in 1995
by some city gangs to establish outposts in Vermont. Those efforts have
diminished, Colgan said, but some of the gang members remained, ''and the
connections to the city stayed with them.''

Once heroin establishes a toehold, ''it gets worse because it's
addictive,'' he said. ''You've got three people, and two weeks later you've
got nine people.

''And now it's established, and we find for these younger people, it's
nothing to jump in a car and drive down to Springfield. They have the
mobility and the heroin is cheap.''

With a population of about 18,000, Rutland feels more like a small town
than its urban counterparts in larger states. But the city was shaken at
the end of November by a double murder allegedly committed by a pair of men
who were using crack cocaine. Authorities say the men then carjacked a
woman downtown and killed her after leaving the state.

The crime was a wake-up call for city residents who had grown uneasy at the
increasing thefts. Although police have seen an increase in crack cocaine
in the city, they say their primary focus is heroin, owing to its
addictiveness and the rapid rise in its use, particularly among teenagers.

Today, drugs have become such a part of public discourse here that when
Mayor John Cassarino announced this month that he would seek a second term,
he departed from the usual list of mayoral accomplishments to devote nearly
a third of his 20-minute speech to the topic.

''It ripped my heart out and I'm sure all of you felt the same thing,''
Cassarino said of the murders.

The dramatic increase in heroin use, Colgan said in an interview last week,
is fueled by the dropping cost and increased purity of the drug. Those who
might be put off by injecting heroin, he said, are now getting hooked by
snorting or smoking it.

So far, the state has primarily reacted by seeking more law enforcement
resources. Rutland officials are scrambling to find more money for police,
and at the statewide level Governor Howard Dean asked for $230,000 in this
year's budget address ''to strengthen local law enforcement efforts to stop
the sale and use of heroin in Vermont.''

But many, even in law enforcement, say additional money for police will
only be part of the solution.

Tucker, the Rutland police captain, said the department believes a
three-pronged approach is necessary: law enforcement, treatment centers,
and education. ''I don't think you can overload one aspect at the expense
of the other,'' he said. While there is an immediate need for more police
staffing, Tucker said, the heroin problem won't go away if treatment
centers aren't available as a sentencing option.

Others say the state, until last year one of a handful in the country that
didn't allow methadone clinics, has seriously lagged behind on treatment.

James Leddy, a state senator who first worked with heroin addicts 30 years
ago while doing graduate work in Miami, is the leading proponent in the
Legislature for establishing methadone clinics, a move that Dean has resisted.

Leddy introduced the bill last year to allow Vermont to provide methadone
treatment. It was approved by the House and the Senate, he said, and then a
compromise was worked out with the governor in which methadone treatment
would be allowed as an outpatient program in hospitals. To date, Leddy
said, only two facilities - in Burlington and Brattleboro - have expressed
interest in establishing clinics.

So for now, those seeking treatment follow the same corridor that the drugs
follow: the interstates to Massachusetts, where 31 methadone clinics
scattered across the state receive some government funding.

Some former addicts, Leddy said, have testified in hearings that they rise
hours before work so they can make a daily round-trip - sometimes lasting
several hours - to methadone clinics across the border.

Although Leddy wants to change that, he wasn't always so sure. More than 20
years ago, when Leddy was director of the Vermont Office for Alcohol and
Drug Abuse, he discouraged a couple of for-profit firms from establishing
methadone clinics.

''I felt it was still sort of a second-best approach,'' he said. ''I was
still of the mind that drug free was the way to go.''

Today he sees it differently. ''I was mistaken,'' he said. ''I think the
power of the drug and the craving that it generates calls for a different
response.''

Leddy said that establishing the first two clinics could cost the state
about $200,000, but he hopes the facilities will put a dent in the costs of
having no treatment available in Vermont, such as the crimes committed by
those raising money for drugs.

Many in the still vastly rural state have been reluctant to face up to the
sudden emergence of heroin as a drug of choice, he said.

''It surprised many people, it has frightened even more,'' Leddy said.
''This wasn't supposed to happen. How can this happen to us here in this
state?''