HEROIN LURES TEENS

AN abundance of heroin on Melbourne streets is enticing teenagers from the
bush to buy drugs for their country friends.

Youths are using rail and road to help feed their addictions and are
returning to the country to shoot up at school, in the street and at home.

Police, social workers and families in regional towns told the Herald Sun
there had been a massive increase in drug use and overdoses in recent
months.

Victoria Police crime statistics reveal a 25 per cent increase in drug
possession and use offences in regional areas in 1997-98, compared with the
previous year.

Drug cultivation, manufacturing and trafficking offences rose by 9 per cent,
to 1363.

Ballarat social worker Wendy Gerrett said when his popular 20-year-old
nephew Kane, a boiler attendant, overdosed and died on February 1 this year,
it was only the second time he had used heroin.

Ms Gerrett said young people such as Kane were experimenting with heroin in
their homes and were looking to get high, not die.

"We've had calls from people who knew of five children aged 13 going to a
house in the suburbs to buy heroin and they couldn't wait to get home so
they shot up on the footpath," she said.

"Others have told us of their children being offered $20 starter kits in
schools, where addicts show the kids how to use drugs in parks and toilets.

"They are selling cigarettes laced with heroin, that look like a normal
smoke, for $10."

Regional counsellors say concerned parents in rural areas are not seeking
help for their drug-using children because of the shame factor in small
towns.

One west Victorian woman had her house trashed twice by a drug dealer after
her son was unable to pay for his drugs.

"But she won't get help because she lives in fear and doesn't want everyone
in the town to know her son is using heroin," one counsellor said.

Police are concerned the purity and low cost of the drug are making it a
more viable, but deadly, option for youngsters.