NO NEEDLES. NO FEAR. JUST DESPAIR AND DEATH

Killer drug storms the suburbs

[PHOTO CAPTION] Elena, 18, is at Daytop Village in Mendham Township, trying
to kick a $100-a-day heroin addiction. `Parents in Morris County like to
pretend that heroin is still a drug for the middle-aged male laying on the
streets of Newark or New York. It's not,' said the Rev. Joseph H. Hennen,
the drug treatment center's executive director. Photo by Chris Pedota

Today, someone in Colombia is swallowing more than $100,000 worth of
heroin, hermetically sealed in 75 condoms. He will fly into Newark and walk
casually through customs, his illicit cargo concealed in his intestines.

Once expelled from his bowels, the heroin will be processed, transported
and sold, some of it to a Morris County 17-year-old whose mother forgot to
hide her car keys that day. To cover his costs, the teen addict will sell
some of his score to eager freshmen and sophomores at his high school.

The youths will secrete their small, odorless $10 bags of heroin into their
backpacks and jeans pockets, retreat to their rooms, whip out a short straw
and snort away.

No needles. No veins. No blood. No fear.

Because they are not shooting up, they do not consider themselves junkies.
But the powder is powerful enough to kill -- and as many as 16 times this
year in Morris County, it has.

Heroin has stormed into suburban New Jersey and is leaving a trail of
bodies in its wake. The 16 fatal overdoses -- up from three in all of 1992
- -- represent a fraction of those who continue to snort, smoke and inject
the drug regularly here.

"Parents in Morris County like to pretend that heroin is still a drug for
the middle-aged male laying on the streets of Newark or New York. It's
not," said the Rev. Joseph H. Hennen, executive director of Daytop Village
drug treatment center in Mendham Township. "It's here."

"The more realistic profile (of a heroin user)," said Kieran Ayre, clinical
director of the High Focus Center in Sparta, "is a 16- to 18-year-old white
male or female from a middle-to upper-class environment, who is a B or C
student."

Others say heroin is so pervasive that users cannot be generalized. "It's
rich and poor, single-parent families and two-parent families. It's
everyone," said Denville Patrolman Mark Boyer, who said local use of the
drug has "skyrocketed" in his three years with the department.

Duane Carmody of Hopatcong, at 20 already a veteran of the Morris County
drug scene, said heroin has supplanted marijuana as today's drug of choice.
"It's impossible to find someone selling pot. But if you walk three blocks
down, you can get heroin," he said from the county jail where he was being
held on drug charges. "There's so much heroin around, it's unbelievable.
It's all over the place."

So are its victims. As young as 17 and as old as 42, strapping
student-athletes and withered junkies alike, 1998s heroin victims fit no
typical profile:

* Rockaway Township's Sean Haubrich, 17, was doted on as a child and was
considered a "yuppie in training" by his friends and family.

* John Wayne Healy of Parsippany was a 20-year-old high school dropout from
a broken home who dreamed of forging a family with his ex-girlfriend and
their daughter.

* Margaret Ann "Peggy" Gardner of Jefferson was a quiet, unassuming
25-year-old with no local police record who overdosed three weeks before
she was to be married.

* Deborah Ann Koepke, 42, of Parsippany was a divorced mother of two who
had led a troubled existence and had lost her zest for life.

Whatever the differences in their backgrounds and personalities, the 16
Morris County victims shared a weakness for a drug that -- for a few hours,
anyway -- wipes the mind free of worry.

Their deaths reveal heroin's unprecedented penetration into this neck of
suburbia. Its initial affordability, coupled with an increase in purity
that allows users to get high without injecting it, has made heroin more
attractive and dangerous.

Twenty years ago, 30 percent pure heroin was high-end, according to the
federal Drug Enforcement Administration. It wasn't until 1990 that
Colombian drug lords introduced a significantly purer heroin to steal
customers from the Asian, African and European suppliers. Snorting became
the most prevalent means of heroin use in Newark, in part because heroin
injectors were contracting HIV through shared needles.

The Colombians, seeing higher profit and lower risk in heroin than cocaine,
took over and expanded the drug's market. They moved heroin through their
well-oiled northeastern cocaine trafficking network, reaping the rewards of
a drug that, by weight, sells for four times as much as cocaine. Heroin's
purity, just 39 percent nationwide, surged to 72 percent in New York City,
and bags above 80 percent are not uncommon in New Jersey, according to the
DEA.

That purity, even though it has led to fatal overdoses, has done anything
but scare addicts straight. Users looking for ever-stronger heroin are
known to seek out the "brand" that recently killed someone. Dealers
accordingly give their heroin such ominous labels as Born to Kill, 911 and
The Grim Reaper.

Simple economics have made heroin affordable, at least initially, to
children: As the Colombians increased the supply of heroin, its price came
down. A $10 bag (about a tenth of a gram) is enough to get a beginning user
high. That has helped bring the average age of first use down from 27.3 in
1988 to 19.3 in 1995, and quadrupled the rate of first use among 12- to
17-year-olds over that period.

Countless statistics bear out heroin's rise, both nationally and locally. A
sampling:

* Nationwide, 325,000 people reported using heroin within the past month in
a 1996 survey, up from 68,000 in 1993.

* Authorities seized 49 kilograms of heroin in New Jersey last year, up
from 13.5 in 1996, and are on pace to seize 55 kilograms (121 pounds) this
year.

* The percentage of heroin-related admissions to substance abuse treatment
programs in Morris County rose from 16 percent in 1994 to 24 percent in
1996. Daytop is treating 15 patients for heroin addiction, up from two in
1992.

* Heroin-related emergency room episodes nationwide rose from 33,052 in
1990 to 74,714 in 1995.

Simply put, heroin today is easy to smuggle, buy, conceal and use. And
before long, addicts say, it's hard as hell to do without.

"That craving literally overcomes everything," said Henry, a Morris County
heroin user for most of his 50 years, who asked that his last name be
withheld.

"The first time I used heroin, I lost every word in my vocabulary except
wow," said Henry. "Wow kind of sums the whole thing up. It's just an
incredible feeling."

Heroin is processed from morphine, which is extracted from poppy plants.
Invented a century ago by aspirin-maker Bayer in an ill-fated effort to
cure the morphine addictions of Civil War veterans, heroin rushes through
the bloodstream to receptors in the brain, slowing down the body's systems
and obliterating all emotional and physical pain with a satisfying calm.

The opposite extreme is the horror of withdrawal -- vomiting, stomach
cramps, diarrhea, body aches, insomnia and sweating. "It's an awful
combination of psychological distress and physical problems," said Dr. Neal
Schofield, psychiatrist and director of the chemical dependency program at
St. Clare's Hospital/Boonton Township.

"Some people get real sick when they don't do it," said Carmody. "They
don't realize they're (so addicted) until they get sick. And you stay sick
for like a week, two weeks. That's why they go back to it."

"It's a little bit like a virus. It gets into everything," said Schofield.
"That's why going off it is like being pulled apart."

Inveterate users are unmistakable. "The living dead" is how Patrolman Boyer
describes them. "Hygiene just goes out the window," the officer said.
"They're unwashed, they smell, their life literally revolves around that
fix." Often they lose weight as heroin becomes their food.

But short of the hard-core junkie stage, heroin users are difficult to
detect. "Heroin is a very insidious drug," said Gregg Benson, chemical
dependency program administrator St. Clare's Hospital/Denville. "Parents
may not see any major changes."

Boyer recalled one 19-year-old whose heroin habit grew to 18 bags a day.
"His parents for a long time were clueless," he said. "The only reason he's
alive is he's in and out of jail so much."

It might be two years into a teen's addiction before his parent realizes,
Hennen said. "By the time you spot weight loss, it's far down the road and
your kid is gone."

Heroin addiction is progressive: over time, it requires more and more of
the drug to achieve the same high. Snorters and smokers may graduate to
injecting the drug, which gets it into the bloodstream in seconds rather
than minutes, but eventually they find themselves taking heroin to avoid
withdrawal rather than to get high.

Death can come with any hit. An overdose occurs when the heroin slows the
body so much that not enough oxygen reaches the brain, causing fatal or
permanent damage. In 1995, the last year for which statistics are
available, heroin-related emergency room visits jumped to 74,715
nationwide, up from 33,052 in 1990.

Yet the danger seems lost on many Morris County parents. "The biggest area
we struggle with is parental denial," said Ayre, the rehab clinic director.
"They don't want to believe it's their child that's involved."

Boyer said parents are often ungrateful after he's arrested their
heroin-using children. "You're picking on my kid!" they tell him. "That
gets frustrating," said Boyer, "because I know that kid doesn't stand a
chance."

One father, upon being told by school officials that his daughter might
have a drug problem, "wanted us to keep it quiet because he thought it
would hurt her chances to get into a good college," Morris County
Prosecutor John B. Dangler said.

A half dozen Madison School District parents complained when their children
were required to attend a forum hosted by Dangler, in which recovering
addicts at Daytop warn of heroin's dangers. One real estate agent even
chastised the superintendent for "single-handedly lowering the property
values in Madison" because the forum made it appear heroin had reached
Madison. News flash: it has.

Ayre gives in-school talks on drug awareness and sometimes asks teachers to
leave the room so students can speak candidly. "I'll say, `Answer me
honestly: If I were a new student and I had $20 in my pocket, how easy
would it be to get drugs in this high school?' And kids raise their hands
and say, `Give me 15 minutes.' I ask them about heroin, and they say, `Give
me a couple of days.'"

Buying heroin often involves a drive out of the county, where it can be
less than $10 per bag (it's $18-$20 here) and more likely to be real. Over
two hours on a recent Monday night, police watched as three dozen motorists
bought heroin and crack on a Paterson street corner. They arrested eight of
them, including two 17-year-old boys from Montville (one a doctor's son)
and a 22-year-old whose parents had moved him from Dover to Pennsylvania to
get him away from drugs.

That's why some parents have taken to hiding their car keys. Ray Rusak of
Chatham, who knew his son Steve had a drug problem, last May 18 hid his
keys but forgot about the spare set. Steve found it, scored some heroin,
overdosed and died in a Union County parking lot.

But hidden keys are at most an inconvenience for heroin addicts. "A lot of
them go to New York City," said Boyer. "They hop on the train, they're
there and back in an hour or two, and their parents never know it."

"An addict will find drugs in Alaska," said ex-heroin user Matthew
Dougherty, 24, formerly of Morris Plains.

Dougherty found his in New York City. After two years of heroin use, on
July 23, 1994, he overdosed on a brand called Satan and barely survived.
Today he uses a wheelchair and lives in a group home for brain-injured
people in Hawthorne.

"You can't tell an addict to stop. They have to find out for themselves,"
he said. "I thought I was invincible."

So, perhaps, did Eric Mickens. After all, he had been a star running back
for Butler High School's 1994 state champion football team despite smoking
marijuana throughout his teens. In late 1997, he admitted to his mother
that he had tried heroin but said it had made him sick and he wouldn't
touch it again.

Mickens made the same promise to his former step-father, a recovering
heroin addict who warned him that using the drug would ruin his life or
kill him. It did the latter, on April 24, in his own bed.

Today's dangerously pure heroin makes no exceptions for star athletes or
longtime users. Ten of the 13 fatal overdose victims in Morris County last
year were over 30, as were eight of the 16 this year. Many had spent time
in rehabilitation programs, but the relapse rate for heroin patients is high.

Dougherty's mother, Dolly, said she "had a clue" he was using drugs, but
never suspected heroin. A visit to his room after the overdose proved
revealing. "There were bugs," said Dougherty. "I used beer cans as urinals
so I wouldn't have to get up. And there were buckets of vomit."

But as Benson said, warning signs aren't always apparent. Joseph Vincent
Loia of Morris Plains, for example, was known as a good kid from a good
family in a good neighborhood. The former altar boy was a poet, a musician,
a cook, a painter, an avid reader.

"He was not a junkie," his mother, Anna Ciavattone Loia, said nearly six
months after her 24-year-old son was killed in January by a combination of
heroin and a barbiturate. "He gave us no reason to suspect anything....
Sometimes I thought I was so lucky to have a son like that."

>From local police to federal agencies, authorities are trying to curb
heroin's spread. Drug arrests are up 25.5 percent statewide and 66.5
percent in Morris County this decade. New Jersey authorities seized more
heroin in 1997 than in the three previous years combined. More beds in drug
treatment centers are going to heroin addicts. Dangler continues to sponsor
anti-drug forums at local schools.

And on Oct. 5, a by-invitation-only "Focus on Heroin Summit" hosted by
Daytop is expected to attract Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and experts from
across the country to talk about the heroin problem in Morris, Sussex and
Warren counties.

The experts and elected officials will convene at the Parsippany Hilton to
advance their search for solutions. But only one guaranteed cure for heroin
addiction has yet been found. Sixteen grieving families in Morris County
could tell you about it.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski