SUBURBAN HEROIN USE SURGES

As suburban youth increasingly try heroin, more users are being treated
in Chicago area emergency rooms than in most other big cities, and
doctors believe the drug is causing a surge in life-threatening asthma
cases.

Doctors are studying whether the increase is due to more first-time
users snorting instead of shooting up a drug that has become more pure
and less costly.

"We're seeing a lot of life-threatening asthma associated with heroin
inhalation," said Dr. Cory Franklin, director of the medical intensive
care unit at Cook County Hospital.

Police said an increasing number of heroin users they arrest are
complaining of asthma. And officers, who are seeing more heroin on the
street, have been spotting asthma inhalers on users.

Franklin said he is studying whether the asthma is triggered by the
heroin itself or adulterants added to the drug. A separate Northwestern
University Medical School study published this year tracked five asthma
cases linked to snorting or smoking heroin.

"In the future we might see more pulmonary complications from heroin
abuse and fewer intravenous problems such as HIV and infection of heart
valves," Franklin said.

"China white," or heroin from Southeast Asia, is the most popular type
in Chicago now. Its purity levels exceed 25 percent on the street, far
higher than the 10 percent seen in 1991, according to a National
Institutes of Health study released in June.

Users are younger and from higher economic brackets than in the past as
popular culture promotes a kind of "heroin chic." And the study notes
that heroin "is no longer primarily an urban or inner-city phenomenon,"
pointing out that in a recent survey of 715 young heroin users, nearly
40 percent had a suburban address.

Heroin use among 12- to 17-year-olds rose 43 percent from the first
half of 1998 to the first half of 1999 in Chicago, the study said.

"More people are snorting because purity is up," Franklin said.
"Snorting would make the drug more palatable to youngsters who might be
averse to shooting up."

Chad is a 23-year-old self-described junkie who ran away from his upper-
middle class Morton Grove home when he was 16 and gravitated to New
York, where he started snorting heroin at 19.

"People said it was less addictive when you snort it," said Chad, who
asked that his last name not be used. "It catches up with you."

Chad said suburban teens, whom he calls "weekend warriors," flood the
neighborhood near Belmont and Clark on Friday nights to "score." They
don't know what they are in for, he said.

This year's heroin-related deaths of Jason Jamrozek, 20, of Rosemont;
Ryan Fried, 18, of Buffalo Grove, and Dane Anderson, 17, of Arlington
Heights, are grim reminders of the migration of the drug from the inner
city to the suburbs in the last 10 years.

Heroin-related deaths in the Chicago area rose from 224 in 1996 to 359
in 1997 and 404 in 1998, according to the federal Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration.

And 9,725 heroin users visited Chicago area emergency rooms in 1999
compared with 9,331 in New York. For every 100,000 people, there were
164 such visits in Chicago, 110 in New York and 35 in Los Angeles.
Chicago was behind only Baltimore, San Francisco and Newark, N.J., in
per capita visits.

As with the explosion of crack cocaine use in the early 1990s, New York
experienced a heroin problem before Chicago, but it has since
stabilized, said Afsaneh Rahimian, a researcher at the School of Public
Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"All our data indicate that heroin use is going up in Chicago,"
Rahimian said. "But to the best of my knowledge, we have not had any
increases in the availability of treatment slots for heroin, especially
among younger users."

Chad has tried to kick the habit several times and shudders when
recalling the drug withdrawal process, which inflicts symptoms worse
than the flu. He said he wants to quit for good, but only two hours
earlier, he had shot up a $10 bag. He was exchanging his old needles
for new ones at one of the city's community outreach centers, which
also provides health services and referrals to treatment programs.

"It's a trendy drug to do," said Chad, who lives with a friend on the
North Side. "It's glamorized. But it's a way of life for me. . . . I
almost lost my parents for good from the heroin--it will make you steal
from your grandma. I want out."