USE OF DEADLY, INEXPENSIVE HARD DRUG ON THE RISE

"They're dropping like flies," a Seattle firefighter said to me last
summer. "There's an epidemic among 17-, 18-year-old girls. We find a lot of
them dead, down at the ferry terminal, in the restrooms."

I learned, and painfully, that there's more shocking news to hear. It's
news I'd like to see extensively reported daily in The Seattle Times.

Seattle is experiencing an influx of heroin and it's nothing like we've
seen before. Heroin is purer, and that makes it deadlier. Heroin is
cheaper, even at $70 to $100 a gram. And heroin is easier to buy. Teams of
Mexican teenagers, and others without the strength to stop it, make sure of
that.

Heroin is smuggled in, and not without powerful help. Once the opiate is
here, it's split up and distributed by dealers from their vehicles. Once
hard to find, a person can now know six dealers ready to sell heroin in the
suburb of Shoreline.

The irony of this is that no heroin addict wants to be an addict. They're
constantly trying to get off of it. And the dealers don't know how to
survive without dealing. Some are hooked, too. People don't seem to know
what to do about it.

One 19-year-old female addict who's still alive said a combination of
heavier undercover cop activity, inexpensive and immediate treatment and
constant DARE reminders from kindergarten through 12th grade is needed now
to curb this epidemic.

Some kids, and adults, forget or don't know about any of this. And as a
concerned community, we should be here to inform and remind them, and that
means you, too, Seattle Times.

Ann Moore, Shoreline