'CHEESE' FLOWING INTO AREA SUBURBS

Heroin Mixture A New Variation On An Old Problem, Officials
Say

It was like ordering takeout.

Youngsters from 14 to 20 years old, from Rockwall and neighboring
hamlets, hung out at a shopping center to hook up with friends who
would make the run. Then they'd "order up," hand over their money, and
the runners would be on their way.

But they weren't going for pizza. These mostly middle-class suburban
kids were going to South Dallas "trap houses" where they bought drugs
- - cocaine, pills, and the cheap, cleverly marketed form of deadly
heroin called "cheese."

Authorities have found that dealers are packaging the drug in ways that
appeal to kids - and often are mixing their product with whatever's
available, meaning that users don't know the potency of what they're
ingesting.

Cheese is black tar heroin ground into powder and mixed with Tylenol PM or
other antihistamines containing diphenhydramine. Drug dealers have found
that the tan-colored, snortable concoction is more appealing to youngsters
than more traditional forms of heroin.

Since 2005, cheese heroin overdoses have claimed the lives of at least
24 people 18 or younger in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

"We have a problem with heroin, and we have a particular problem with
drug pushers packaging it in such a way that it's appealing to young
people," said Debbie Meripolski, executive director of the Greater
Dallas Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse In McKinney, police recently
reported interviewing a teenager who admitted using cheese but didn't
know he had actually ingested heroin. Not a new problem In Rockwall,
police joined forces with the Dallas office of the Drug Enforcement
Administration to investigate the South Dallas-Rockwall drug
connection. They found that young user-dealers were driving into
Dallas, walking into apartments full of dope, cash, guns and dangerous
strangers to fill their orders, then hustling back across Lake Ray
Hubbard to their waiting customers.

Rockwall police Lt. Carl Alsabrook said the user-dealers were regular
kids from area towns who attend Rockwall schools. They have no strong
common thread, he said, and are from all economic levels.

The ones making the runs into Dallas were dealing to their friends to
cover the costs of their own drug use.

Heroin users have always "cut" or diluted the drug with something,
from baby laxative to Benadryl, which eases runny noses, nausea and
other symptoms. Because of this, some experts say that to focus on the
Tylenol PM component is to miss the point.

Dr. William Rohr, Collin County's medical examiner, ruled that Scott
Clark, 18, a student at McKinney Boyd High School, died this summer
from the toxic effects of heroin, and noted the presence of
diphenhydramine. But Dr. Rohr stressed that the young man died because
of heroin, and that it was no different from the many heroin deaths he
has investigated since the 1980s. "It's nothing new," Dr. Rohr said.
"It's just a matter of what you call it." Several experts have
questioned whether media coverage of the new wrinkle in heroin
packaging does more harm than good. They worry that using the name
"cheese" glamorizes the drug and might actually help popularize it.
But Lt. Alsabrook sees the publicity as a public service. "The more
information you can get out there to parents and kids, the better," he
said.

'As far up as we could go' Lt. Alsabrook's department learned of the
"order up" arrangement between Rockwall and Dallas in late 2006, but
it wasn't until April that authorities were able to make supervised
buys at the trap houses. Investigators who worked on the case said
it's hard to figure how many doses, or "bumps," can be made from any
given amount of cheese because there are so many variables in the process.

The Dallas dealers charged about $80 a gram in their neighborhood,
Rockwall police said. The "white-boy price" for user-dealers who came
to Dallas to get the drug was $100.

Rockwall police and DEA agents began their investigation with the "end
users" - the suburban kids who "ordered up"- and worked back through
the user-dealers who made the runs, to the Dallas trap house operators
and finally to the Garland residence of a man they said was a heroin
wholesaler. "That was as far up the chain as we could go," Lt.
Alsabrook said. "The next link up from Garland is Mexico."

The investigation led to three raids in June. A juvenile has already
been sentenced to 15 years in the case. Three adults await trial on
first-degree felony charges of possession with intent to distribute,
punishable by five years to life in prison and a $10,000 fine. A big
danger is that users are at the mercy of dealers who cut the product
by mixing it with whatever's at hand. Most users have no way of
knowing the potency or purity of the stuff they ingest.

In the Rockwall-Dallas investigation, authorities found that the
dealers didn't mix the heroin and Tylenol at first - the users did.
Later, after some of the kids complained that they didn't know how,
the Dallas dealers started mixing it for them and passing along the
cost of the Tylenol. Like any other form of the drug, cheese heroin
can be addictive and eventually will demand more cash than most kids -
even middle-class suburbanites - can get their hands on
legitimately.

"We haven't seen any violence directly related to cheese heroin," Lt.
Alsabrook said. "But we think a lot of property crimes, especially
burglaries of motor vehicles, may be these kids stealing stuff they
can pawn to buy drugs."

DEA spokeswoman Terri Wyatt declined to comment on the investigation,
saying there were still many leads to be followed beyond the situation
in Rockwall. Lt. Alsabrook said there was no known connection between
this investigation and Paige Elliott, a 16-year-old Rockwall High
School student who died of an apparent drug overdose Sept. 17.

Lt. Alsabrook said police "strongly suspect" that cheese heroin was
involved, but they won't know for sure until they get the results of
the toxicology tests done at Ms. Elliott's autopsy.

Base moving out? Cheese heroin first showed up in Dallas schools in
2005, where DISD police Detective Jeremy Liebbe is credited with first
noticing it. He found that mostly Hispanic teens at Marsh and Cary
middle schools and W.T. White, North Dallas and Thomas Jefferson high
schools were getting heroin imported from Mexico from adult dealers
and mixing it with Tylenol PM. Students snorted it in school bathrooms
and sometimes even in classes. DISD administrators acknowledged early
this year that cheese use was a "major concern." Sen. John Cornyn,
R-Texas, has discussed it with North Texas law enforcement officials
in meetings and introduced an amendment to a bill that added cheese to
the drugs addressed by the National Youth Anti-Drug Campaign.

A Dallas school district presentation describes the typical $2 "bump"
as "tan-colored powder usually snorted through a tube, straw or the
barrel of a ballpoint pen, packaged in a small paper bindle or clear
plastic bag." Users hide the drug in small packets under the tongues
of tennis shoes, in bras, inside markers and in the battery
compartments of cellphones. McKinney Boyd High School also sent copies
of a briefing to teachers so they would know what to look for. Among
the warning signs: the words "cheese," "cheez," "chz," "queso" or
"keso" in cellphone text messages. Detective Liebbe said that he
believes the number of students caught with cheese heroin in Dallas
schools is down this fall either because tips are typically slow early
in the school year or because kids are getting better at hiding it.

"We saw a really nice decline toward the end of last school year," he
said. "The campuses that had problems got involved and combated the
problem, but we're starting to see overdose deaths in Arlington,
Irving, Rockwall and McKinney. The base seems to be moving out."

'It's heroin' Some local police and treatment professionals aren't
buying it, saying that heroin use is not new to the suburbs.

"We're still not recognizing cheese," said Plano Police Department
spokesman Rick McDonald. "We don't even discuss cheese. We discuss
heroin overdoses." Officer McDonald dismissed the label "cheese" as a
marketing gimmick drug dealers use. "It's heroin, and sometimes by
using different names of the drug, it less dignifies what it is," he
said. "It's heroin." In the mid-1990s, a "chiva" heroin epidemic
killed 20 young people over three years. Collin County has logged six
heroin deaths this year, with victims' ages ranging from 17 to 58,
said Sabina Stern, Collin County substance abuse coordinator.

"The number of heroin deaths is slightly higher than usual, but not
off-the-charts higher.

"We're not seeing those young kids die," she said. "If I do hear the
word 'cheese' and I ask them where they're seeing it or buying it,
they all say 'Dallas County.' "Whether it's 'cheese' or 'heroin,' a
lot of people are dying," Ms. Stern said. "And that's the nightmare."

Staff writer Jason Trahan contributed to this report.