HEROIN'S RISE IN POPULARITY NO NEW PHENOMENON

The increased evidence of heroin's use today is just the latest surge
in popularity of a drug that has been around for more than a century.

"As one drug goes out of fashion, another one takes its place," said
Darren Dunham, assistant director at Home with Hope rehabilitation
facility in Lafayette.

Heroin, discovered in 1895, is a derivative of morphine, itself a
derivative of opium. Opium, which is prepared from the seed of the
opium poppy plant, is a narcotic that has been used for several thousand years.

Heroin was initially marketed by the pharmaceutical industry as a
safer, less addictive substitute for morphine. Experience proved
otherwise, and in 1924 the U.S. Congress made the production and sale
of heroin illegal.

Illicit sales continued and instances of heroin abuse, particularly
among well-known jazz musicians and other artists, created a drug
mystique that persisted over the generations.

Heroin's notoriety reached a peak in the 1970s with the deaths of
rock celebrities Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Popularity of the
drug waned during the 1980s as other drugs became more available and
worries about HIV infection increased.

From the early 1990s, the increased availability of purer forms of
heroin that could be inhaled or smoked, coupled with decreases in
costs, boosted usage rates, the government reported.

From 1991 to 1997, the annual number of emergency room visits in
major metropolitan areas increased from 36,000 to 72,000, according
to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Although heroin usage rates declined from 2000 to 2002, usage rates
remained higher than during the early 1990s, according to the 2005
National Institute on Drug Abuse Research report "Heroin Abuse and Addiction."