NUMBERS FOLLOW NATIONAL FINDINGS ON 'DRUG OF CHOICE'

JACKSON - A dearth of heroin-related arrests belies the increase of
the addictive narcotic in Mississippi.

"From past experience, when we begin to find and make those arrests,
the incidences (of use) are much higher than what we know," said June
Milam, executive director of DREAM Inc., a Jackson-based nonprofit
organization formed to promote grassroots, community-based prevention.

Trost Friedler, the executive director of Harbor House, a treatment
center for drug and alcohol abuse, said he's not surprised by the find.

"If you look statistically at other parts of the country, heroin use
has surpassed crack cocaine as the drug of choice," he said.

"I expect that number (of heroin arrests) to increase significantly
over the next number of years," Friedler said.

On Jan. 20, Madison County sheriff's deputies and the Mississippi
Bureau of Narcotics raided the home of Cassandra Carter, 21, in Sharon
and charged her with two counts of sale of heroin.

Authorities say they discovered 33 dosage units of heroin wrapped in
aluminum foil valued at about $700, along with a large uncut bag of
heroin worth between $12,000 and $14,000. An unspecified amount of
marijuana and Valium and $650 were also seized.

Milam and Friedler say they expect their treatment centers to be
overwhelmed as heroin use balloons.

They have only to look at the explosion of crystal methamphetamine in
Mississippi to see heroin's potential.

State and local law officers found more than 150 methamphetamine
manufacturing labs in 40 of 82 Mississippi counties last year, said
Maj. Faron Gardner, in charge of the analytical and intelligence unit
of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. That compares with 38 labs
seized in 1998 and one in 1997.

Mississippi was late following the national explosion of crystal meth.
And officials at drug treatment centers say the same could happen with
heroin.

"We are starting to see a trickle, not a mad overflow," said Willie
Carter, program director for Harbor House. "It is here. I've had lots
of mentions of it through clients."

Sheriff's deputies suspect Carter had been in operation about six
months and was in the process of setting up a heroin distribution ring.

"We haven't had any heroin in this area, all through the 1990s, up
until a year ago," said Jim Marlett, chief of narcotics for the
Madison County Sheriff's Department. "Over a period of (the last) four
months, we have had four heroin busts in Madison County."

In fact, Marlett said, some of his younger officers didn't even
realize what they were seeing.

They had read about it, but because it had never come up before, they
didn't know it when they first saw it.

Marlett suspects the heroin is being shipped down from the North -
possibly Detroit or Chicago.

After hearing about the Madison County operation, officials began
their undercover work.

"Hopefully, we got it in time. There is still some looming around, but
it's not an epidemic," Marlett said.

Statewide, few heroin arrests have been reported.

Looking at his records from 1996 to present, Gardner said the
Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics has recorded no heroin arrests by that
agency. Gardner's department serves as the clearinghouse for drug
information from city and county departments. But not all information
is necessarily shared, he says.

Charlie Brown Jr., assistant special agent in charge of the Drug
Enforcement Administration in Mississippi, reports the last major
heroin arrest was made in Meridian in November 1998. A kilo of heroin,
being transported through Mississippi to another state, was
confiscated.

Outside of some arrests on the Gulf Coast, Brown said, his agency has
no reports of heroin arrests in north or central Mississippi.