HEROIN'S DEATH TOLL

We need your help. A total of 16 people have died over heroin overdoses in
the Dallas-Fort Worth area the first nine months of 1997. The youngest
victim was 13 years old. Many of the victims from Plano, a prosperous
suburb north of Dallas, were under age 20.

While many parents feel like "it can't happen in my community," we fear
this trend is going to spread to other areas of Texas. We have two enemies:
the international drug market and public ignorance.

These are the facts. The quantity of heroin being shipped to the United
States is increasing. The purity of the drug is up and the price is being
dropped as a strategy to win new customers. And that means overdoses and
fatalities among misinformed, young users are going up as well.

Federal and state law enforcement agencies tell us drug dealers are
deliberately targeting teens and young adults from the suburbs, telling
them heroin is not addictive when it is snorted or smoked.

We need your help to get this message out to young people and their
families: Heroin is back. Heroin is addictive. Heroin kills.

It doesn't matter how you take it, heroin is dangerous and it can be fatal.

TERRY BLEIER, Executive director, Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug
Abuse, Austin