BOZ SCAGGS' SON DIES OF OVERDOSE

When blues singer Boz Scaggs canceled a weekend concert citing a "family
emergency," few realized how grave the circumstances really were: His
21-year-old son, Oscar Scaggs, was dead of a heroin overdose.

In the early morning hours of New Year's Eve, Oscar Scaggs went alone to a
Mission District address where he knew he could buy the drug, according to
his parents. He never came back, and was pronounced dead at 5:06 a.m.

He was, in the words of his parents, "a person of sensitivity and
compassion, with an animated and quirky sense of humor and a sense of
abandon that was both a blessing and a curse."

His death, in some ways, tragically mirrored that of his lifelong friend
Nicholas Traina - son of romance novelist Danielle Steel - who died of a
heroin overdose 15 months ago at age 19. The Scaggs family said Oscar had
been "deeply affected" by Traina's death.

After brief experimentation with heroin, Oscar Scaggs immediately sought
treatment at several facilities in the Bay Area, said Millicent Buxton, a
rehabilitation counselor who worked closely with him at the Haight-Ashbury
Free Clinic over the last year.

"He was a very, very sweet young man . . . that had kind of an old soul
about him," said Buxton. What shocked Buxton about the death is that while
he had been struggling with his addiction, he had been making progress.

"The (recovery) efforts being made by Oscar were very valiant, and he was
very serious about it," she said. "He also had a lot of support from his
family."

>From the moment she read about Boz Scaggs' canceled concert, she prayed
that there was no connection to Oscar. She was crushed to learn the truth,
and disgusted when she heard that Oscar Scaggs had been robbed even as he
lay dying.

"Just the picture that I have of someone going through his pockets . . .
it's so horrible, undignified and tragic," Buxton said.

San Francisco police said there was no information immediately available on
the case Sunday. An investigator at the medical examiner's office declined
to comment on the location or other details of Scaggs' death, saying the
autopsy report was incomplete pending the outcome of toxicology and
pathology tests.

The memorial services will be private, and the family requests that
remembrances be made in Oscar Scaggs' name to the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic.

His mother, Carmella Scaggs, said Sunday she hoped the publicity over her
son's untimely death would bring renewed focus to drug abuse and the "easy
availability of drugs in this town."

"It's not just kids like Oscar and Nikki, but everybody's babies that are
at risk," she said, referring to the death of Nicholas Traina.

The tall, slender Scaggs had a passion for skateboarding and a flair for
clothes perfectly tailored to the hip urbanity of the Diesel store off
Union Square, where he worked.

He lived with his mother in the Russian Hill area of The City, often
working as a sound technician at Slim's - the nightclub co-owned by his
father. He also frequently went on tour with his father, which allowed him
to nurture his love of music.

Oscar Scaggs had attended San Francisco State University briefly to take
audio engineering classes after graduating from high school on Whidbey
Island in Washington state. He also had attended Town School in San
Francisco and the Foreman School in Connecticut.

Several of his friends from school and his social set somberly stayed at
his home over the holiday weekend, and family friends arrived bearing boxes
of food and words of comfort, compassion and condolences.

"He was a lovely young man and I think it is a dreadful accident," said
family friend Ann Getty. "Too many of my friends have kids that have died
from drugs . . . and I think it's ridiculous that kids can get their hands
on drugs so easily."

Getty said she hoped to launch a citizens' crusade, a task force, "a real
posse" - whatever it took to examine the extent of the drug scene
permeating youth culture in The City.

"There has to be something done," she said.

That sentiment was echoed by others, including Buxton, who said the plague
of heroin addiction is only getting worse.

A new, particularly potent strain of heroin has made its way to San
Francisco in the last few months - one that is 60 percent pure - and the
risk of overdose is greater than ever, she said.

San Francisco already has twice the drug-related death rate of California,
averaging about 160 per year.

Supervisor Gavin Newsom, who knows the Scaggs family personally, said such
senseless losses underscore the importance of the methadone waiver
legislation he has been championing for the last two years.

Last February, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution urging the
federal government to grant The City a waiver so that private physicians
could prescribe methadone for patients hooked on heroin. Now, only the
Health Department can administer methadone.

"This is something that is with us and that is damning in its proportion,"
Newsom said Sunday. "We all have to come to grips with it and and we have
to start talking about new solutions.

"San Francisco has to wake up to the reality that this epidemic is so much
bigger than any of us imagine," he said. Boz Scaggs, 54, recorded two
albums with the Steve Miller Band before embarking on a solo career in
1968. He achieved success in the late 1960s and 1970s with hits like
"Lowdown," "Lido Shuffle" and "We're All Alone." He and Carmella Scaggs are
divorced.