IN AFFLUENT FAIRFAX, YOUNG USERS AND SELLERS ABOUND

Meet the drug dealer: 15 and freckle-faced and already experienced at his
trade.

He started his lucrative Fairfax County business the same year he became a
teenager, handling the hottest commodity — marijuana — but also a boutique
line of PCP, Ecstasy, Special K. Two years later, he was "hooking up and
dealing to a few adults."

It was only then, the Oakton boy said, that he thought his life "was weird."

Teenagers dealing drugs is a reality in neighborhoods throughout suburban
Washington, from leafy Bethesda to the landscaped neighborhoods of Columbia
and the quiet drives of Bowie. The Washington Post concentrated on Fairfax,
the area's largest jurisdiction, to find out how and where suburban youths
get their drugs — gathering information about juvenile drug arrests and
drug searches, and interviewing 100 county youngsters in depth, as well as
scores of law enforcement, school, court and counseling officials.

Virtually all of the teenagers — who were contacted through treatment
centers, randomly at a mall and at the juvenile detention center, where
most were not being held on drug charges — said they not only use drugs but
also sell them, mostly to friends and most so casually they bristle at the
label "dealer."

Drug counselors also said most of the teenagers they evaluate have admitted
distributing drugs in addition to using them.

"The notion that an outsider is dealing to kids is a bunch of malarkey,"
said Robert F. Horan Jr., the Fairfax commonwealth's attorney. "The average
kid in this community gets his drugs from another kid."

The teenage drug problem in Fairfax is hardly worse than elsewhere in the
Washington area, but its very existence is notable in a county with low
crime, affluence, a highly educated populace and one of the best school
systems in the nation.

It is a county literally populated with people who moved there because they
care about their children, yet drugs pervade it.

Over the last four years, 6,000 juveniles were directed to the county's
growing drugtreatment program — and an equal number of others were
referred at their request from there to private facilities.

During the last school year, 111 were recommended for expulsion for drug
and alcoholrelated incidents, and there were 544 suspensions. More than
560 were arrested in the last calendar year in Fairfax and its incorporated
towns for drug crimes, nearly 12 times as many as were arrested a decade ago.

Last year, of the children treated at Inova Fairfax Hospital's emergency
room, 163 children were found to be under the influence of drugs.

As chilling as the statistics are, "the numbers don't reflect the depth of
the problem," said Patrick McConnell, who oversees the county's youth
alcohol and drug services.

Adults, of course, are at the top of the supply pyramid. The middle is
murky. Teenagers who got drugs from someone outside their age group said it
came from older teenagers or young adults ages 18 to their early twenties —
a group that would show up as adults in any arrests — but because drug
organizations are tiered, teenagers may not know where their suppliers got
the drugs. But at the bottom, police, prosecutors and teenagers say,
children are dealing to children, not just in Fairfax but across the country.

Illicit drug use among eighthgraders has more than doubled in the last six
years, according to some national drug surveys, and while recent studies
show a dip that might indicate a tapering of the growth, the numbers remain
substantially higher than they were at the beginning of the decade.

Most of their drug deals, Fairfax teenagers said, are quick transactions
that take place in homes and cars but also in public, at theaters and
sports events, at various shopping malls and in parking lots. The absence
of openair drug markets shouldn't be taken as an absence of flagrant
dealing, as one 17yearold Chantilly girl's description made clear.
Teenage dealing goes on, she said, in spots "like grocery stores,
elementary schools, places you'd never think a drug deal is going down.
Tennis courts, pools." It is "everywhere," she said, yet "completely
invisible."

Small, Casual Sales Ask Fairfax kids where they get their dope and the
answer comes back: Fairfax kids.

"My experience is that kids tell the truth" when asked in counseling about
their drug use, McConnell said. "The kids will tell you exactly what is
going on in the street."

What they say echoes what the nation's drug czar says.

If your child bought drugs, "it was from a student of their own race
generally," said Barry McCaffrey, head of the White House Office on Drug
Control Policy.

The criminal cases filed against 263 juveniles in Fairfax County bear that
out. The cases, brought from July 1, 1996, to June 30, 1997, show the
defendants were overwhelmingly white, male and ages 15 to 16. The youngest
was a Reston girl, 11 at the time she was charged with marijuana possession.

The users and the sellers were high school athletes, runaways, honor
students, gang members, cheerleaders, victims of sexual abuse and car
thieves. Their parents lead busy lives as lawyers, government employees,
business owners, teachers, construction workers and financial consultants.

Like the Reston girl, the vast majority of defendants was from the county;
only 16 were from outside. All but two county high schools showed at least
one of its students in the arrest records, and a number of middle schools
and four private schools.

Although some teenagers move large quantities of drugs for older teenagers
or adults, most said in interviews that they deal in a flurry of smaller,
more casual sales to a tight circle of friends and acquaintances. Girls
said it is easier, and cheaper, for them to get drugs than it is for boys,
and some girls said they have traded sex for drugs.

Marijuana possession was the most common offense in the court cases, but
there were 39 instances of distributing drugs on school property and 52
felony cases for distributing or possessing a controlled drug.

"Kids, across the board, report that it's easier to get marijuana, LSD,
drugs like that, than it is to get cigarettes," said Thomas W. Minnick, the
director of Northern Virginia Counseling Group, a private treatment
facility. "Pretty amazing, when you think about it."

Although marijuana and alcohol are widely popular, children surveyed in the
county's public treatment program reported that they had used others: 40
percent have used LSD, and 75 percent have used inhalants. They have sucked
fumes out of the top of unshaken whipped cream cans, inhaled Freon from the
family air conditioner and downed bottles of Robitussin cough medicine to
find a high. Five seventh and eighthgraders at Hayfield Secondary School
were arrested in November after the school principal heard that a student
was selling other students Ritalin, a prescription drug for attention
deficit disorder.

Children in treatment also said their drug use started early, often as
young as 10 or 12.

Among the 100 Fairfax teenagers interviewed for this article, nearly all
said they had sold drugs undetected and weren't overly concerned about
getting caught. Tellingly, it was often a behavior problem or crime other
than drug use that landed them in trouble.

"Nobody ever gets caught unless somebody snitches. It's the easiest way to
make money," said a 17yearold Clifton youth, being held on car theft
charges. Like others in custody, and most of those interviewed outside the
court system, he asked for anonymity.

One eighthgrader, caught dealing marijuana at his Herndon middle school
after a classmate alerted an administrator, told Fairfax police that
business was so good he had to hide his money from his parents to avoid
suspicion.

"He said he made so much money ... he had to dig a hole in his wooded back
yard and bury it," county police officer Gary D. Bailey said.

When they want to finance their own supply, teenagers will buy a little
extra and sell it to friends. Some said they make hundreds of dollars a
week or more, with business especially brisk after school, when parents are
at work.

Allowances and checks from parttime jobs help pay for the drugs, some
teenagers said, while others said they steal money from their parents or
mooch dope from friends.

The hottest item is marijuana packaged in tiny, easytoconceal bags: in
$5, $10 or $20 packets.

A 16yearold Burke teenager said she sold drugs for six years from her
family's threebedroom town house. Her mother "doesn't know I sold," said
the girl, who was being held in juvenile detention after running away from
home. "She knows I smoke weed, but she'll never know how much. Six years
dealing in the same house, I'm lucky."

Making a connection can be easy, especially given that teenagers say they
use the openness of an area to their advantage.

"If we're going to do it, we're going to do it out in the open," a
17yearold Herndon teenager said. "The cops won't expect it." The
teenager, who was being held on petty theft and assault charges — not a
drug charge — said he sold outside a multiplex theater.

Another 16yearold Burke teenager said he bought and sold marijuana and
LSD at the top of the Springfield Mall parking terrace. Other times, it was
at the local Roy Rogers.

Over a twoyear span, he said, he sold marijuana to about 200 people, with
20 to 30 regular customers. He bought drugs, including LSD and PCP, using
money he made as a supermarket stock boy. He didn't view himself as a major
dealer, just someone who sold his excess marijuana three or four times a
week to help friends and make a little cash.

"We sell it everywhere," said a 17yearold drug dealer from Reston,
"everywhere you see people."

He and other teenagers had smoked and sold drugs routinely on a hill at
Reston Town Center, he said. But that wasn't where he was caught. Police
arrested him this year on a possession with intent to distribute charge
after they pulled him over during a routine traffic stop in Reston and
found marijuana in the car.

In recent months, he said, he has bought drugs in Washington, in Laurel and
near Iverson Mall in Prince George's County. He would sell $20 minibags at
his high school, he said, in the bathrooms and by his locker. The boy said
that during his freshman and sophomore years alone, he sold marijuana to 50
to 100 students.

He never saw marijuana smoking or selling "as a big deal," he said. "I
still don't."

In fact, many of the teenagers saw no harm in marijuana. That perception is
erroneous based on federal research that shows today's marijuana is as much
as 10 times more potent than versions common 20 years ago. And teenagers
didn't see themselves as dealers because their trafficking often occurred
in social settings.

"We had parties in people's houses," another 17yearold from Herndon said.
"We had field parties in the summer, Great Falls Park, kids go there and
get high. We had hotel parties all the time," with one member of the group
renting a room for the night and inviting friends. "Any party I'd go to
there would be drugs."

He called his business "little stints of selling," mostly marijuana and
LSD, typically buying $100 worth and making a quick $50 from resales. He
sold at parties and rave dance clubs in Washington and Baltimore. His
customers: a total of about 50 youths in grades 10 to 12. The money, he
said, was a nice supplement to what he was paid for working at a diner. His
suppliers were "a guy 19 or 20 who lived in Herndon" and another who
resided in Great Falls. "He always had a pound."

The smoking and selling stopped recently when he started to skip class and
was caught by a school administrator. Suspicious, she asked him to empty
his left pocket. He pulled out 20 hits of LSD. "She called the cops," he
said.

In some areas of the 399squaremile suburban county, drug dealing has more
of an urban feel, as a pregnant 12yearold from the Alexandria section of
the county explained.

She was a marijuana and crackdealing apprentice to her older brother.
"He's not a bad person," she said. "He's got to make a living for his kids.
He doesn't have a high school diploma."

She packaged drugs in tiny baggies and wore black at night, "so if the
police roll by, they can't see you." She was careful to stay away from
someone else's turf. She could make $500 to $600 a night, she said, if she
stayed out long enough.

"Will I sell again?" pondered the child, who initially was arrested on a
charge of assault and battery. "If I need money to help my mom."

A 17yearold Great Falls high school football player said he's not sure he
could give drugs up. "I could live 40 years, but the thought of not having
drugs or alcohol for 40 years is kind of scary."

At the Inova Kellar Center, a private, nonprofit treatment facility in
Fairfax, weaning children from drugs has proven extraordinarily difficult,
in part because of the closeknit nature of dealing. Giving up drugs can
mean giving up friends. "We have to teach them to have activities outside
of drugs," said Sheri Mitschelen, a program coordinator. "We have to brace
them for returning back to the community."

Rude Awakening In one Fairfax neighborhood, a mother who thought she was
savvy and found out she was anything but sounds the same message.

She got the word about a year ago at a Pampered Chefs party, one of those
gatherings where neighbors get together to nibble refreshments and buy
cookware.

Another mom pulled her aside in the kitchen and broke the news: Her
14yearold daughter was bragging to other eighthgraders about smoking
marijuana.

The girl's mother, 52, never thought her daughter — an honor student and
Division I soccer player — would consider using an illegal drug, much less
at such a young age.

"Fourteen? It was just nowhere in my thought process, and I consider myself
somewhat savvy," said the mother, a parttime college teacher.

Later that day, she and her 45yearold husband, a pharmacist, confronted
their daughter, who admitted it was true. "After she smoked the pot, she
said, 'I have more friends now,' " her mother recalled. "That was scary."

Realizing other students were involved, and after agonizing for hours, the
couple decided to turn in their daughter to school officials — without
telling her.

The next thing they knew, their daughter was calling from school,
hysterical. "Mom, they found out!" she cried. She told her mother that she
lied to school administrators at first but then spelled out what she had
done in a "statement of facts."

"On Friday the 15th we were in Band class," when a friend gave her "a
joint," she wrote. "He took it and showed it to me. I was like oh can I
smoke it with you. He was like sure. We got on the bus and went to our
separate homes. He called me later and then we went to smoke it around his
house. I took like 4 puffs and he finished the rest."

Her parents sent her for a drug assessment that concluded she had been
caught early in her use of pot. They also sent her to a therapist, to try
to make sure she doesn't backslide. She was allowed to stay in school. But
as word spread, other parents began keeping their children away. "She had
one friend who came up and said, 'I can't be friends with you anymore,' "
her mother said. "That was tough, boy."

Her mother also began to feel ostracized. "I just felt like the whole world
knew, and they thought we were terrible parents."

Concerned that the neighborhood didn't have the full story, she decided to
tell other parents what happened — and broke the news at a neighborhood New
Year's Eve party.

"I told these parents" about her daughter and about the drugs that were at
their children's school, the mother said. "They were dumbstruck that I was
telling them this. I mean, I'm their PTA president."

Tomorrow: Why more teenagers are not caught.