NORTHERN MICHIGAN SEES INCREASE IN HEROIN USE

Police Attribute Rise To National Explosion In Painkiller Abuse

TRAVERSE CITY -- The use and availability of heroin appears to be on the
rise in some northern Michigan communities, police and drug treatment
counselors say.

"We have seen not what I would characterize as a significant increase, but
a noticeable increase, in the presence of heroin in the Grand Traverse
area," said Detective Lt. Kip Belcher with the Traverse Narcotics Team,
which serves seven area counties.

In a recent case in Antrim County, Robert Hill, 47, was sentenced Jan. 13
to six months in jail and 2 1/2 years of probation after earlier pleading
guilty to possession of heroin.

In Charlevoix County, Straits Area Narcotics Enforcement is preparing to
charge an Emmet County woman with possession of heroin with intent to
deliver after they said she had 62 packets of the drug when they arrested her.

Detective Lt. Ken Mills, unit commander of the Straits team that covers
Emmet, Charlevoix, Cheboygan and Otsego counties and part of the Upper
Peninsula, says the agency has worked on three heroin cases in the past month.

"We've been receiving information of a trend. There's a market up here, and
people are starting to sell it," Mills said.

Terry Warner at Dakoske Hall, a drug and alcohol treatment center in
Traverse City, said although the number of heroin addicts the center treats
is small, heroin use appears to be rising.

"When we talk to heroin addicts, the few that we get almost joke about how
naive the northern Michigan public is about the availability and use of
heroin," he said.

Mills and others attribute the growth in heroin use to a nationwide
explosion in abuse of prescription painkillers such as OxyContin, morphine,
Vicodin and methadone.

Mills said when OxyContin abuse became popular a few years ago, many of its
users were former heroin addicts. But doctors and pharmacies have begun to
clamp down on OxyContin.

In prescribed doses, OxyContin offers relief for end-stage cancer patients
and others in severe pain. On the street the drug is crushed and snorted or
injected for its high.

The result is that demand is outpacing supply. It can actually be simpler
to get an illegal drug on the streets than attempt to abuse a legal
prescription drug, Warner said.

"If someone is inclined toward addiction, they may gravitate toward what is
easiest to abuse," he said. "High schoolers, for example. Sometimes it is
easier for kids to get marijuana than to get carded trying to get alcohol."