OPIATES: 'WE KNOW WE'VE GOT A PROBLEM'

KALAMAZOO -- Heroin users are younger these days.

A decade ago, they were in their mid-30s, said Michael Liepman, an
addiction psychiatrist with Michigan State University's Kalamazoo
Center for Medical Studies.

Now, abusers of the highly addictive drug are teenagers and young adults.

"There's been a progression of heroin down the age ladder," Liepman said.

Portage Central High School graduate Amy Bousfield was just 18 when
she died of an overdose of heroin last month, fueling fears that
there may be a new wave of drug problems washing into the community.
Portage police continue to investigate Bousfield's death.

Of serious concern, Liepman said, is that heroin is among several
narcotic opiates, including some prescription drugs, that seem to be
rising in popularity.

"Opiate users are not just heroin users," he said.

The county's top medical officer also is sounding the alarm.

Dr. Richard Tooker, chief medical officer for Kalamazoo County Health
and Community Services, said his office has seen a "persistent and
sustained" rise in the number of deaths in which the use of opiate
narcotics was involved.

He has no figures to back up the assertion, but since 2004, Tooker
said he has noted a jump in incidents of intentional overdoses and
unintentional overdoses, as well as times where the drugs contributed
to a death or were found incidental to the actual cause and manner of a death.

Tooker said he believes the spike is being fueled by an increase in
availability of prescription opiates such as methadone, OxyContin,
Vicodin and morphine.

"We know we've got a problem," Tooker said.

Statistics from the Michigan Office of Drug Control Policy tend to
support what Liepman and Tooker have seen locally. Donald Allen, the
agency's director said the National Survey on Drug Use and Health
from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
showed that in 2006, illicit drug use among people 12 or older was at
8.3 percent, a jump from 8.1 percent in 2005.

While marijuana was the most commonly used drug, Allen said 9.6
million people in 2006 reported using a drug other than marijuana
within a month of the survey, and the number of people who reported
using painkillers not prescribed to them jumped from 4.7 million in
2005 to 5.2 million in 2006.

"They represent a new way for people to become hooked on opiates,"
Allen said of prescription drugs. "They start taking it and they've
taken far more than is prescribed, and the next thing you know
they've developed an opiate addiction. When that runs out, they go to
the street drugs and get involved in things like heroin."

Is It Happening Again?

Concerns about heroin use among students in Portage Public Schools
surfaced during the 2005-06 school year.

"We saw a trend in students bringing to school harder drugs, more
lethal drugs," said Ric Perry, assistant superintendent for
instruction at Portage Public Schools.

The district responded in a variety of ways. Drug-sniffing dogs are
now periodically brought into the high schools; the district sponsors
two parent information meetings on substance abuse a year; and the
district adopted harsher penalties for drug use or possession, while
also offering to suspend those penalties if users sought treatment.

Teachers also were given training in how to identify substance abusers.

Police also got involved.

By June 2006, the Southwest Enforcement Team, a multi-jurisdictional
drug unit run by the Michigan State Police, had identified 10 to 15
heroin users, ranging in age from 15 to 21, in Portage and other
areas of the county. Investigations showed teens were going to the
southeast and north sides of Kalamazoo to buy the drug from street dealers.

State Police Sgt. Jim Coleman said the heroin use among young adults
two years ago was of concern because at the time a deadly hybrid drug
made by mixing heroin or cocaine with fentanyl, a synthetic form of
morphine, was circulating on the streets. The mixture was blamed for
hundreds of deaths in Chicago and Detroit in 2006 and fentanyl was
linked to at least two deaths in Kalamazoo and Portage that year.

Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Sgt. Shannon Bagley of the
Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team said heroin has made a resurgence
locally in the last five to seven years as the "kind of the 'in'
drug" as it has become more potent and cheaper to purchase. He said
the use of heroin and all other drugs crosses socioeconomic lines locally.

"You can't pigeon-hole drugs," Bagley said. "How it is sold... may
differ, but drugs are everywhere."

Coleman said heroin, like marijuana, cocaine and crack, continues to
be a problem locally. Ecstasy and mushrooms also seem to be making
more inroads and methamphetamine labs are a constant drain on
resources, he said.

Coleman said State Police investigations have shown most drugs are
imported from Canada and Mexico and then shipped into Kalamazoo from
the "distribution hub" cities of Chicago and Detroit. Ecstasy is
typically shipped in from Detroit and mushrooms often are grown
locally, he said.

Heroin typically comes from outside the U.S., but its origin often is
hard to pinpoint, Coleman said. Once the drugs hit Kalamazoo, they
are routinely distributed from "stash houses" on the north and south
ends of the city, he said.

"There really hasn't been a diversification of what the bad guys are
putting out on the market," he said. "The reality is you can pretty
much go anywhere in the Kalamazoo area and find what you're looking for."

Differences in Dealing

Bagley said KVET sees more hand-to-hand dealing of drugs in
Kalamazoo, while drug transactions in Portage happen at houses and in
parking lots.

Still, he said local drug dealers are constantly modifying their
modes of operation, and the evolution of technology has helped them
become more mobile in their business.

"We don't do investigations the way we did two years ago because
they're changing," Bagley said. "They're only limited by their
imaginations so law enforcement has to change... so we can address
new developments."

Since the spike in heroin use SWET saw in 2006, Coleman said arrests
in Detroit have helped to cut the production of the deadly
fentanyl-heroin mix coming out of Detroit and, locally, heroin use
seems to have curtailed.

"That was something that was in the crosshairs," Coleman said of
heroin. "The problem was much more severe than it is now. I don't
believe it's to the magnitude it once was."

And in Portage, Perry said the school district hasn't had to suspend
or expel a student at Central or Northern high schools because of use
or possession of hard drugs in more than two years.

"We've had some students who have gone into treatment, but they
weren't apprehended at school," Perry said.

"It does seem that what we've done has been successful in reducing
the stuff brought into schools," he said. "But I'm real leery in
saying we've found the answer."