HEROIN IS MAKING A COMEBACK IN NH

This is the first of a two-part series on the rise in heroin use in New
Hampshire. Tomorrow's articles will focus on how heroin gets here and the
challenge it poses to law enforcement in the state.

Heroin has been making a slow but steady comeback across New Hampshire,
officials said.

The head of a Dover drug and alcohol treatment service said there are a
large number of young people who have made the leap from cocaine to heroin
in the past year and a half.

"What we've seen, probably in the last 18 months, is a dramatic shift,"
according to Ray McGarty, executive director of Southeastern New Hampshire
Services.

"The first drug our clients are dealing with is alcohol. Two years ago, the
second drug was cocaine. Now, it's heroin," he said.

State officials are hearing the same thing from other crisis centers.

Timothy Hartnett, director of the Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Prevention and Recovery, said information coming from hospital emergency
rooms and from crisis centers is showing a significant increase in heroin use.

"Heroin has moved into the No. 2 use after alcohol, which is really
noteworthy," he said. "It's certainly more than reasonable to assume that
we have a significant heroin problem in New Hampshire," Hartnett said.

Users getting younger

Mike Mirrett, coordinator of emergency medical services at Southern New
Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua, said he also has seen a major increase
in the past couple of years.

"We're seeing it from not just the inner city folks," he said, "but the
outlying areas, the smaller, more affluent communities."

The addicts are for the most part young, he said, in their 20s and 30s.

The heroin user in the Seacoast area is between 18 and 25, McGarty said.

"That's very different for heroin users. Historically, they've been older,"
he said.

Manchester Police Sgt. Robert Moore, who heads the Special Investigations
Unit, said his officers are seeing the change in heroin users in the
state's largest city.

"We're definitely seeing an increase in the heroin," he said. "If you go
back 20 years, there was a nucleus of heroin users in this area who would
typically run down to Massachusetts, sometimes New York.

"They get up in the morning, go shoplifting, then head down there and cash
in their stuff. There are people out there who have been doing it for 20
years," Moore said.

Then, around 1997, when the state saw the number of deaths from heroin
overdose double from the previous year, investigators realized the potency
of the heroin had become significantly higher.

Heroin deaths level off

Dr. Thomas Andrew, the state's chief medical examiner, has been keeping
track of heroin overdose deaths since 1997. The numbers have leveled off
since then, he said, but he still has cause for concern.

Some investigators suggested the numbers had dropped as addicts realized
the potency of the heroin, but McGarty credits ambulance attendants with
catching the overdose in time to keep the victim from dying.

In 1997, he said, a paramedic in Nashua might be looking for narcotic
overdose symptoms.

"But in Rollinsford? An EMT in Rollinsford three years ago would never go
into a situation expecting to find an overdose," McGarty said.

Martin Singer, chief of the state's Division of Emergency Medical Services,
which trains emergency medical technicians and paramedics, said he believed
first-responders were paying closer attention.

"We upped our recognition of narcotics' overdoses because experience told
us we were having more of these and not only just the heroin," he said.

Singer said paramedics will look for the tell-tale signs of an overdose,
including pinpoint pupils along with the victim being unconscious and
having trouble breathing.

"They administer what we call a 'coma cocktail' which is made up of vitamin
B12, glucose and a drug called Narcan," Singer said.

It is the Narcan that saves the patient. It's sole purpose in the human
body is to block opiates, such as heroin.

"They are out of the coma in 20 to 30 seconds," McGarty said.

And, Singer said, the beauty is there are no side effects, so if it turns
out the victim has had a stroke instead of a drug overdose, no damage is done.

Heroin is stronger now

Billy Yout, resident agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration office, said the purity levels of heroin have risen
significantly over those of the past.

"In general, in New England, the purity levels are 60 to 65 percent," he
said. "Twenty years ago, that was absolutely unheard of."

State Police Sgt. Michael Hambrook, who serves in the Narcotics
Investigations Unit, said that in the 1970s, heroin was only about 3
percent pure.

DEA labs, testing heroin in other parts of the country, have recorded
purity levels of up to 90 percent, Yout said.

Those are levels that make it easy to get high by sniffing it or smoking it.

James Norris is commander of the Attorney General's Drug Task Force, which
is made up of 24 detectives from around the state on loan from their
departments. They work out of offices in Concord, Portsmouth, Berlin and
Lebanon.

He's concerned about the trends he sees elsewhere that he expects will
surface here one day, especially in the increased use of heroin by
teenagers. He's heard the horror stories from other officers and even from
parents attending drug conferences.

"Down in Delaware and in Philadelphia, they are having a tremendous amount
of heroin overdose deaths of high school kids," he said. "These kids are
saying 'Goodnight' to Mom and Dad, going upstairs, overdosing and their
parents find them in the morning. It doesn't bode well for here."

Andrew's numbers on the state's heroin overdose deaths reflect the wide
range of users, who range from 18 to 50 years old. Of the total heroin
deaths, 77 percent were males. The average age of the dead males was 35
years. The youngest in that time to die from heroin was 18, the oldest was 50.

For the females dying of a heroin overdose, the average age was 28. The
youngest was 20, the oldest 44.

Across social lines

Andrew's numbers also back up the story that others tell about those who
use heroin: It crosses the social strata from the old vision of the junky
shooting up in the alley to "Married with Children."

Hambrook said they've seen any number of addicts.

"There are doctors, lawyers, that principal," he said, referring to
Margaret Loder-Healy, the 46-year-old former principal of an elementary
school in Newton, who was sentenced in June after pleading guilty to
possession of heroin and admitting she was an addict.

The heroin dealer selling in New Hampshire today will most likely be a
heroin addict who's selling to support his or her own habit, investigators
said.

Norris said years ago, when he was working undercover, he would buy from a
user but not a user who was supplied by an organization. Now, he said, the
user/dealer is getting his heroin from an organization.

"It's drug organizations that are making a ton of money on somebody else's
misery," he said.

"You have all these addicts out there paying $10 bucks a bag, 20 bags a
day, that's $200 a day, every day. You're talking about $1,400 a week. In
10 weeks it's $14,000. That's $73,000 a year. That's not food or a roof
over your head," Norris said.

"And they sleep through most of it. They shoot it, go on the nod, wake up
and crave it again. It's something they have to do every day."

Moore said late afternoon in Manchester is "last call for heroin."

"The crack and coke people are up all night," he said. "These people
(heroin addicts) are nodding off early, get up, get sick. It's kind of like
living like a laboratory animal."

Moore said some of the dealers even stop by in bars on Lake Avenue around 4
or 5 p.m. to see if their regular customers need a fix.

Yout said heroin use is cyclical.

"We seem to skip a generation. We have since I've been on the job," he
said. "Now we're getting a new breed of junky, one who doesn't have a
historical memory and who has no fear."

Thirty years ago, heroin addicts injected themselves, putting the drug
directly into their blood streams and often shared needles.

"Enter hepatitis A and AIDS," Yout said. "It scared a lot of users away."

But the high-level purity of today's heroin means it can be smoked, snorted
and even mixed with another drug.

"If they smoke crack cocaine, they can smoke heroin," Yout said. "They
don't think it's addictive."

But, Andrew said, it doesn't take long to get addicted and then, more often
than not, the addict will start to inject.

Hambrook tells the story of a young man in the Seacoast area whose mother
had asked Hambrook to talk with her addict son.

"The kid is buff," he said. "He works out, he's an athlete and he says he
can keep it up as long as he has his heroin. He's doing 30 bags a day."

The young man started out snorting a little heroin every day, then slowly,
as his system developed a tolerance for the drug, increased his intake.

Then, when he was spending $300 a day to support his habit, Hambrook said
the young man's girlfriend suggested he could save money by injecting it
instead of snorting.

Initially, the young man said, the high from injecting 10 bags worth was
equal to the high of snorting 30 bags. That only lasted a short while,
Hambrook said.

"Now he's shooting up 30 bags a day," he said.

The deadly danger comes, often, when an addict has given up the drug,
whether voluntarily or because he has been jailed for some reason, Andrew said.

"After detoxification, the user's tolerance goes down," he said. They often
will "shoot up," using the same amount and purity levels that had worked
for them in the past, only to discover their systems can't handle it.

The novice injecting with more experienced users is also in serious danger
of an overdose, Andrew said.