HEROIN DEATHS ON THE RISE

Officials Mount Multifaceted Plan

On Thanksgiving Day, a Hanover woman found her 23-year-old son dead
from a suspected heroin overdose. Three weeks later, on Dec. 16, an
18-year-old girl died at home in Abington. Another young man died in
West Bridgewater on New Year's Eve. More recently, on Jan. 6,
Abington police found a 38-year-old man dead in his home, another
apparent victim of heroin.

Those reports of fatal heroin overdoses have made local headlines and
sent shockwaves through cities and towns south of Boston, prompting
police and health officials to renew, even rethink, their strategies
on combating drug abuse.

Abington Police Chief David G. Majenski is calling for funds to put a
full-time police officer in the local schools. Health officials are
considering expanding the use of the drug naloxone. And the
Brockton-based Southeast Center for Healthy Communities and the state
Department of Public Health are facilitating discussions among
parents, law enforcement officials, and drug treatment providers on
how to deal with the scourge, once viewed as a largely urban problem,
that threatens to overrun this area's bedroom communities and school systems.

To be sure, opiate abuse has hit communities across the state, not
just in this area, said Michael Botticelli, assistant commissioner
for the Department of Public Health's substance abuse services.

"We've seen a steady increase in fatal and nonfatal overdoses since
the late 1990s, and we've seen a dramatic shift in use patterns --
younger and younger kids using stronger and stronger drugs," said
Botticelli. "This is part of the trend we've seen. It's not confined
to the South Shore."

The US Drug Enforcement Agency reports that Massachusetts is flooded
with heroin that's cheap and potent, and the overdoses are often
linked to heroin that is up to 60 percent pure, and sometimes even stronger.

In 1990, the state health department recorded 87 fatal opioid-related
overdoses in Massachusetts. Thirteen years later, the toll had
increased more than six fold to 549 fatal overdoses for the year.

The numbers south of Boston are grim. In Bristol, Norfolk, and
Plymouth counties, the number of fatal overdoses from heroin,
OxyContin, and other opiates jumped from 13 in 1990 to 158 in 2003,
according to state figures.

The death toll in Plymouth County last year was actually the lowest
in four years. At least 10 people died from taking heroin or other
opiates in 2006, said Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz.
More than half of those deaths occurred in the fall and winter;
between October and December, fatal overdoses were reported in
Abington, Brockton, Hanover, Middleborough, Plymouth, and Whitman.

In 2005, 22 people died of opiate overdoses in Plymouth County,
compared with 12 in 2004, according to Cruz. In 2003, the state
reported 42 opiate-related fatalities in the county.

But the problem is far from going away. Local law enforcement
officials say they suspect the recent deaths were caused by either
very potent heroin or heroin that has been laced with fentanyl, a
powerful painkiller prescribed by doctors for cancer patients that is
50 times stronger than heroin.

"Heroin is so much stronger than it was years ago," said Cruz. "The
kids buy it, and they don't know what they're getting. . . . A lot of
these kids are dying."

Majenski, in his department's 2006 annual report, said he is
convinced "enforcement alone is not the solution" to the growing drug
problem. That's why he wants to assign a full-time officer to the
Abington schools, to work with students, teachers, and school
officials against the dangers of substance abuse.

Botticelli said the state has increased spending on treatment
programs, and is continuing its education and prevention efforts on
all kinds of substances.

"Kids don't wake up one day and decide to take heroin or OxyContin,"
he said. "It starts with cigarette smoking and alcohol use."

State officials are also exploring the possibilities of expanding the
use of the drug naloxone, also known as Narcan, which works to
reverse overdoses, he said.

Currently the drug can be administered only by paramedics,
physicians, and a limited number of other medical professionals;
officials are looking at ways to allow more access to the drug as
another "possible option," said Botticelli.

Among area institutions, South Shore Hospital in Weymouth recently
received a grant that will fund two new staff positions and provide
special training for clinicians, teaching them how to identify
patients at risk for abusing alcohol and other substances.

"The idea is to prevent long-term problems by seeking these people
out early on, and getting them into treatment," said Dr. Jeff
Johnson, an emergency department physician at the hospital.

The grant will also allow the hospital to hire two social workers
specifically devoted to substance abuse cases.

Initiatives by parents to combat opiate use among the young or to
help deal with the often-tragic consequences of drug abuse,
meanwhile, have taken off .

Learn To Cope, a support group for parents who have children addicted
to opiates, has grown dramatically since it launched an online
discussion board (learn2cope.org) in September 2004.

In the forum, members can share their successes and tragedies, post
news articles about local drug issues, mourn lost loved ones, seek
advice, recommend rehab programs, or just simply vent.

As of last week, the support group had 274 members; more than 230
messages were posted on the discussion board in the first 10 days of
this month alone.

"It's just getting bigger and bigger," said Joanne Peterson, the
Raynham resident who founded Learn To Cope. "We're parents who have
lived it, or are living it."

The online posts are sobering. A father said he had to perform CPR on
his daughter when she overdosed at home. Another woman wrote she was
afraid of her own son, carried scissors in her pocket for protection,
and had to lock her purse in her trunk so he wouldn't steal her money anymore.

A former Cub Scout den mother, who just discovered her son had left
his treatment program, wrote that she was praying and "hoping he
lives through the night."

Peterson said the opiates today are so powerful they transform good
youngsters into "walking chemicals" who don't have a conscience while
they're using the drugs.

"That's why we're seeing these desperate crimes. . . . These
robberies are being done by kids who were once football stars, or
were college students last year," she said. "We have to fight this
for our kids . . . or we might as well plan their funeral."